• 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


IN   MEMORIAM 
BERNARD  MOSES 


The  RALPH  D.  REED  LIBRARY 

•o 

DEPARTMENT  OF  GEOLOGY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIF. 


SKETCH    BOOK    OF    POPULAR    GEOLOGY. 


POPULAR  GEOLOGY: 


SERIES  OF  LECTURES  READ  BEFORE  THE  PHILOSOPHICAL 
INSTITUTION  OF  EDINBURGH. 


litters  from  a  6toI0pt's  f  0rif0Ii0. 


i     BY 

HUGH    MILLER. 


INTRODUCTORY  RESUME  OF  THE  PROGRESS  OF  GEOLOGICAL  SCIENCE 
WITHIN  THE  LAST  TWO  YEARS, 

B  Y 

MBS.    MILLER. 


BOSTON: 


GOULD     AND     LINCOLN, 

58    WASHINGTON     STREET. 

NEW   YORK:    SHELDON   AND   COMPANY. 
CINCINNATI:  GEORGE  8.  BLANCHARD. 

1860. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1859,  by 

< ,  <  >  I  L  D    AND    LINCOLN, 
lu  the  Clcik'H  OfTico  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts 


I  \1-IH    IIV    W.    K.    l>r.,M>i;il,   AMX>Vtlt,   MASS. 
.(•CI. \TKIi  11Y  OLO.  C.  UAKU  It  AVEItY,  BO8TXIN. 


Geolog 
Lib 


Jo 


PREFACE 


TO 


THE    AMERICAN     EDITION 


THIS  new  volume,  from  the  pen  of  HUGH  MILLER,  is  a  legacy 
wholly  unlocked  for  by  the  American  public.  It  was  known  to  many 
of  his  admirers  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  that  he  had  been  labor- 
ing for  years  on  a  work  designed  to  be  the  magnum  opus  of  his  life 
—  "THE  GEOLOGY  OF  SCOTLAND."  But  his  untimely  death,  it  was 

supposed,  had  cut  short  his  labors,  and  left  the  work  in  a  state  so 

. 

fragmentary  that  his  literary  executors  would  not  venture  to  publish 
it.  The  impression  was  a  correct  one,  as  related  to  the  design  of 
the  author,  in  its  magnitude  and  completeness.  But  the  present 
volume  supplies,  to  general  readers,  what  the  proposed  work  would 
have  done  for  the  scientific  world.  It  gives  the  geological  history 
of  Scotland  —  and,  with  Scotland,  of  the  world  —  in  language  intel- 
ligible to  all,  and  with  an  affluence  of  anecdote,  and  incident,  and 
literary  allusion,  in  which  HUGH  MILLER  was  without  an  equal 
among  the  scientific  writers  of  our  century.  It  gives  precisely  what 


II  PREFACE. 

a  multitude  of  readers  in  this  country  have  been  longing  to  find  — 
a  rational  account  of  the  manner  in  which  all  the  strata  of  the 
earth's  crust  have  been  formed,  from  the  foundation  of  unstratified 
granite  and  gneiss  to  the  alluvial  deposits  of  its  surface.  Scotland  is 
literally  taken  to  pieces,  like  a  house  of  many  stories;  and  one  looks 
on  the  processes  of  the  Divine  Architect,  as  he  would  on  the  work 
of  a  human  builder.  The  hypotheses  (for  they  can  be  regarded 
only  as  such)  are  original,  and  curious,  and  plausible.  Some  read- 
ers may  doubt  their  accuracy,  but  none  will  question  the  eminent 
ability  with  which  they  are  developed.  The  volume  will  add  to  the 
reputation  of  the  author,  and  the  popularity  of  his  writings;  and 
wfll  aid  many,  who  have  a  slight  acquaintance  with  geological  science, 
to  form  habits  of  practical  observation  in  their  country  rambles. 

The  American  Publishers  have  given  the  title  of  "Descriptive 
.Sketches"  to  sundry  papers  which  Mrs.  Miller  has  selected  from 
unpublished  manuscripts  of  her  husband,  and  to  which,  with  charac- 
teristic modesty,  she  gave  the  simple  name  of  "Appendix."  They 
regarded  these  papers  as  an  important  part  of  the  volume,  and  de- 
manding, from  their  intrinsic  merits,  a  distinctive  title. 

BOSTON,  APRIL,  1859. 


THE  REV.  ¥.  S.  SYMONDS, 

• 

RECTOR  OF  PENDOCK,  HEREFORDSHIRE. 


DEAR  SIR, 

Am  I  presuming  too  much  on  my  position,  as  merely  the  editor 
of  the  following  Lectures,  when  I  ask  leave  to  dedicate  them  to  you?  It  ia 
unquestionably  a  liberty  with  the  production  of  another  which  only  very  pecu- 
liar circumstances  can  at  all  excuse.  Yet,  in  the  present  case,  I  venture  to 
think  that  those  peculiar  circumstances  do  exist ;  and  I  feel  assured  he  would 
readily  pardon  me,  whose  work  this  is,  and  whose  memory  you  so  much  revere. 
Without  your  cooperation,  I  believe  that  neither  the  "  Cruise  of  the  Betsey" 
nor  these  pages  could  by  this  tune  have  seen  the  light.  When  my  own  over- 
laden brain  refused  to  do  its  duty,  you  gave  me  to  hope,  by  offers  of  well- 
timed  assistance,  that  the  task  before  me  might  still  be  accomplished.  Your 
friendly  voice,  often  heard  in  tones  of  sympathizing  inquiry  when  I  was  una- 
ble to  endure  your  own  or  any  other  human  presence,  —  even  that  of  my  dear 
child,  —  was  for  a  time  the  only  sound  that  brought  to  my  heart  any  promise  or 
cheer  for  the  future.  It  was  then,  while  unable  to  read  the  very  characters  in 
which  they  were  written,  that  I  put  into  your  hands  the  papers  containing 
"The  Cruise"  and  "Ten  Thousand  Miles  over  the  Fossiliferous  Deposits  of 
Scotland."  You  undertook  the  editorial  duties  connected  with  them  con  amore, 
and  performed  your  task  in  a  manner  that  left  nothing  to  be  desired. 

During  the  preparation  of  the  present  volume  for  the  press,  you  have  given 
me  all  the  advantage  of  your  ready  stores  of  information,  both  in  carefully 
Ecrutinizing  the  text  to  see  where  any  addition  was  required  in  the  form  of 


IV  DEDICATION. 

notes,  and  in  referring  me  to  the  best  authorities  on  every  point  regarding 
which  I  consulted  you.  And  while  so  doing,  you  have  confirmed  my  own 
judgment,  — perhaps  too  liable  to  be  swayed  by  partiality,  —  by  expressing  your 
conviction  that  this  work  is  calculated  to  advance  the  reputation  of  its  author. 
Long  may  you  be  spared  to  be,  as  now,  the  life  and  soul  of  those  scientific 
pursuits  so  successfully  carried  on  in  your  own  district!  Many  a  happy  field- 
day  may  you  enjoy  in  connection  with  that  Society  of  which  yon  are  the  hon- 
ored president  Would  that  all  associations  throughout  our  country  were  as 
harmless  in  their  methods  of  finding  recreation,  as  invigorating  to  body  and 
mind,  and  as  beneficial  in  their  results  to  the  cause  of  science!  In  exploring 
the  beautiful  fields,  and  woods,  and  eunny  slopes  of  Worcestershire,  and  Here- 
fordshire, in  earnest  and  healthful  communings  with  nature,  and,  I  trust,  with 
nature's  God,  —  the  perennial  springs  of  whose  bounty  are  seldom  quaffed  in 
this  manner  as  they  ought  to  be,  —  I  trust  that  much,  much  happiness  is  in  store 
for  you  and  for  the  other  gentlemen  of  the  Malvern  Club,*  to  whom,  as  well  as 
to  yourself,  I  owe  a  debt  of  grateful  remembrance. 

And  for  the  higher  and  nobler  work  which  God  has  given  you  to  do,  may 
he  grant  you  no  stinted  measure  of  bis  abundant  grace,  to  enable  you  to  per- 
form it  aright. 

Ever  believe  me,  dear  Sir, 

•Yours  most  faithfully, 

LYDIA   MILLER. 


•  Tha  Malrern  Club  devote*  itatcd  period*,—  monthly,  I  think,— to  ramble*  over  twenty  or 
thirty  mile*  of  country,  when  the  naturtliitt  of  whom  it  ii  composed,  — botanitta,  geologist*, 
etc.,—  e»ny  on  the  re*e«rche«  of  their  variou*  department*  separately,  or  In  little  group)  of  two 
or  three,  a*  they  m«y  deilre.  They  til  dine  afterward*  together  at  MI  inn,  or  torn-home,  ••  the 
ew  may  be,  where  they  relate  the  adTenture*  of  the  day,  diicnii  thtir  favorite  topici,  and  com- 
pare their  newly-found  (nature*.  At  a  eontequence  of  thit.  the  Malrern  Muteum  it  a  perfect 
model  of  what  a  local  mnteum  ought  to  be.  There  I*  no  town  or  district  of  country  where  • 
(w  younj  men.  pmtefini  the  advantage  of  an  oecaiional  holiday,  might  not  thut  awociaU 
I  with  the  >tmo*t  a.lvantacc  both  to  themtelTet  and  other*. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTORY  RESUME  OF  THE  PROGRESS  OF  GEOLOGICAL  SCI- 
ENCE,    11 


LECTURE    FIRST. 

Junction  of  Geologic  and  Human  History  —  Scottish  History  of  Modern  Date  — 
The  two  periods  previous  to  the  Roman  Invasion;  the  Stone  Age  and  the 
Bronze  Age  —  Geological  Deposits  of  these  Pre-historic  Periods  — The  Aborig- 
inal Woods  of  Scotland  —  Scotch  Mosses  consequences  of  the  Roman  Invasion 

—  How  Formed  —  Deposits,  Natural  and  Artificial,  found  under  them  —  The 
Sand  Dunes  of  Scotland —  Human  Remains  and  Works  of  Art  found  in  them 
—An  Old  Church  Disinterred  in  1835  on  the  Coast  of  Cornwall  —  Controversy 
regarding  it — Ancient  Scotch  Barony  underlying  the  Sand  —  The  Old  and 
New  Coast  Lines  in  Scotland  —  Where  chiefly  to  be  observed  —  Geology  the 
Science  of  Landscape,—  Scenery  of  the  Old  and  New  Coast  Lines  —  Date  of  the 
Change  of  Level  from  the  Old  to  the  New  Coast  Line  uncertain  —  Beyond  the 
Historic,  but  within  the  Human  Period  —  Evidences  of  the  fact  in  remains 
of  Primitive  Weapons  and  Ancient  Boats  —  Changes  of  Level  not  rare  events 
to  the  Geologist  —  Some  of  these  enumerated  —  The  Boulder-Clay — Its  preva- 
lence in  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland  — Indicated  in  the  Scenery  of  the  Country 

—  The  Scratchings  on  the  Boulders  accounted  for— Produced  by  the  Grating 
of  Icebergs   when  Scotland  was  submerged  —  Direction  in  which  Icebergs 
floated,  from  West  to  East—  "  Crag  and  Tail,"  theeflect  of  it— Probable  Cause 
of  the  Westerly  Direction  of  the  Current, 37-88 

1* 


VI  CONTENTS. 


LECTURE   SECOND. 

Problem  first  propounded  to  the  Author  in  a  Quarry  —  The  Quarry's  Two  De- 
posits, Old  lied  Sandstone  and  Boulder-Clay  —  The  Boulder-Clay  formed  while 
the  Laud  was  subsiding  — The  Groovings  and  1'olishiugs  of  the  Recks  in  the 
Lower  Parts  of  the  Country  —  Evidences  of  the  fact  —  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  Ob- 
servations on  the  Canadian  Lake  District  —  Close  of  the  Boulder-Clay  Record 
in  Scotland  —I  t«  Continuance  in  England  into  the  Pliocene  Ages  —The  Trees 
and  Animals  of  the  Pre-Glacial  Periods  —  Elephants'  Tusks  found  in  Scotland 
and  England  regarded  as  the  Remains  of  Giants  —  Legends  concerning  them 
—  Marine  Deposits  beneath  the  Pre-Glacial  Forest*  of  England  —  Objections  of 
Theologians  to  the  Geological  Theory  of  the  Antiquity  of  the  Earth  ond  of  the 
Human  Race  considered  —  Extent  of  the  Glacial  Period  in  Scotland  —  Evi- 
dences of  Glacial  Action  in  Glencoe,  Garelock,  and  the  Highlands  of  Suther- 
land—Scenery of  Scotland  owes  its  Characteristics  to  Glacial  Action— The 
Prriod  of  Elevation  which  succeeded  the  Period  of  Subsidence  —  Its  Indica- 
tions in  Raised  Beaches  and  Subsoils  —  How  the  Subsoils  and  Brick  Clays 
were  formed  —  Their  Economic  Importance  —  Boulder-Stones  interesting  fea- 
tures in  the  Landscape  — Their  prevalence  in  Scotland  —  The  more  remarka- 
ble Ice-travelled  Boulders  described  —  Anecdotes  of  the  "Travelled  Stone  of 
Petty  "and  the  Standing-Stone  of  Torribal  —  Elevation  of  the  Land  during 
tb«  Post-Tertiary  Period  which  succeeded  the  Period  of  the  Boulder-Clay  — 
The  Alpine  Plants  of  Scotland  the  Vegetable  Aborigines  of  the  Country  — 
Panoramic  View  of  the  Pleistocene  and  Post-Tertiary  Periods  —  Modern  Sci- 
ence not  adverse  to  the  Development  of  the  Imaginative  Faculty,  .  84-124 


LECTURE  THIRD. 

The  Po«t  Delta  (Dr.  Moir)  —  His  Definition  of  Poetry  —  Hia  Death  —  His  Burial  • 
Place  at  Invereak —Vision,  Geological  and  Historical,  of  the  surrounding 
Country—  What  it  te  that  imparts  to  Nature  its  Poetry  —  The  Tertiary  Forma- 
tion in  Scotland  —In  Geologic  History  all  Ages  contemporary  —Amber  the 
n  of  the  Pi*u*  Sureini/rr—  A  Vegetable  Production  of  the  Middle  Tertiary 


CONTENTS.  VII 

Ages  — Its  Properties  and  Uses  — The  Masses  of  Insects  inclosed  in  it  —  The 
Structural  Geology  of  Scotland  —  Its  Trap  Rock  —  The  Scenery  usually  asso- 
ciated with  the  Trap  Rock — How  Formed  — The  Cretaceous  Period  in  Scot- 
land—Its Productions  —  The  Chalk  Deposits  —  Death  of  Species  dependent  on 
Laws  different  from  those  which  determine  the  Death  of  Individuals  —  The 
Two  Great  Infinites, 125-167 


LECTURE   FOURTH. 

• 

The  Continuity  of  Existences  twice  broken  in  Geological  History  —  The  Three 
Great  Geological  Divisions  representative  of  three  Independent  orders  of  Ex- 
istences—  Origin  of  the  Wealden  in  England  —  Its  great  Depth  and  high  An- 
tiquity —  The  question  whether  the  Weald  Formation  belongs  to  the  Creta- 
ceous or  the  Oolite  System  determined  in  favor  of  the  latter  by  its  Position  in 
Scotland  —  Its  Organisms,  consisting  of  both  Salt  and  Fresh  Water  Animals, 
indicative  of  its  Fluviatile  Origin,  but  in  proximity  to  the  Ocean  —  The  Out- 
liers of  the  Weald  in  Morayshire  —  Their  Organisms  —  The  Sabbath- Stone  of 
the  Northumberland  Coal-Pita — Origin  of  its  Name  —  The  Framework  of 
Scotland  —  The  Conditions  under  which  it  may  have  been  formed  —  The  Lias 
and  the  Oolite  produced  by  the  last  great  Upheaval  of  its  Northern  Mountains 
—  The  Line  of  Elevation  of  the  Lowland  Counties  —  Localities  of  the  Oolitic 
Deposits  of  Scotland  —  Its  Flora  and  Fauna  —  History  of  one  of  its  Pine 
Trees—  Its  Animal  Organisms  — A  Walk  into  the  Wilds  of  the  Oolite  Hills  of 
Sutherland,  .  ' 16&-202 


•LECTURE  FIFTH. 

The  Lias  of  the  Hill  of  Eathie  — The  Beauty  of  its  shores— Its  Deposits,  how 
formed — Their  Animal  Organisms  indicative  of  successive  Platforms  of  Exis- 
tences—  The  Laws  of  Generation  and  of  Death — The  Triassic  System — Its 
Economic  and  Geographic  Importance — Animal  Footprints,  but  no  Fossil 
Organisms,  found  in  it  —The  Science  of  Ichnology  originated  in  this  fact — 
Illustrated  by  the  appearance  of  the  Compensation  Pond,  near  Edinburgh, 


VIII  CONTENTS. 

in  1842  —The  Phenomena  indicated  by  the  Foot-print*  in  the  Triassic  System 
—  The  Triassic  and  Permian  Systems  once  regarded  as  one,  under  the  name  of 
the  New  Red  Sandstone  —  The  Coal  Measures  in  Scotland  next  in  Order  of 
Succession  to  the  Triassic  System  —  Differences  in  the  Organisms  of  the  two 
Systems  —  Extent  of  the  Coal  Measures  of  Scotland  —Their  Scenic  Peculiari- 
ties—Ancient Flora  of  the  Carboniferous  Period  — Its  Fauna— Its  Reptiles 
and  Reptile  Fishes  — The  other  Organisms  of  the  Period  — Great  Depth  of 
the  System  —  The  Processes  by  which,  during  countless  Ages,  it  had  been 
formed 203-248 


LECTURE   SIXTH. 

Remote  Antiquity  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  —  Suggestive  of  the  vast  Tracts  of 
Time  with  which  the  Geologist  has  to  deal  —  Its  great  Depth  and  Extent  in 
Scotland  and  England  —  Peculiarity  of  its  Scenery  —  Reflection  on  first  dis- 
covering the  Outline  of  a  Fragment  of  the  Asterolepis  traced  on  one  of  its 
Rocks — Consists  of  Three  Distinct  Formations  —  Their  Vegetable  Organisms 
—The  Caithness  Flagstones,  how  formed  —The  Fauna  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone —  The  Pterichthys  of  the  Upper  or  Newest  Formation  —  The  Cephalaspis 
of  the  Lower  Formation  —  The  Middle  Formation  the  most  abundant  in  Or- 
ganic Remains — Destruction  of  Animal  Life  in  the  Formation  sudden  and 
violent  —  The  Asterolepis  and  Coccostens  —  The  Silurian  the  Oldest  of  the 
Geologic  Systems— That  in  which  Animal  and  Vegetable  Life  had  their 
earliest  beginnings  -  The  Theologians  and  Geologists  on  the  Antiquity  of  the 
Globe —Extent  of  the  Silurian  System  in  Scotland  — The  Classic  Scenery  of 
the  country  situated  on  it  —  Comparatively  Poor  in  Animal  and  Vegetable 
Organisms— The  Unfossiliferous  Primary  Rocks  of  Scotland  —  Its  Highland 
Scenery  formed  of  them  —  Description  of  Glencoe  —  Other  Highland  Scenery 
glanced  at— Probable  Depth  of  the  Primary  Stratified  Rocks  of  Scotland  — 
How  deposited—  Speculations  of  Philosophers  regarding  the  Processes  to  which 
the  Earth  owe*  its  present  Form—  The  Author's  views  on  the  subject,  249-298 


CONTENTS  OF  DESCRIPTIVE  SKETCHES. 


Page 

ACCUMULATIONS  OF  SHELLS,  PHENOMENA  EXPLANATORY  <W        .              .  840 

AMMONITES  OF  THE  NORTHERN  LIAS             .....  348 

ASTREA  OF  THE  OOLITE,  SUTHERLAND                 .....  309 

BELEMNITES  OF  THE  NORTHERN  LIAS            .....  349 

BONE-BED,   RECENT,  IN  THE  FORMING                   .....  302 

BRAAMBURY,  QUARRY  OF,  UPPER  OOLITE,  SUTHERLAND              .               .  316 

BREWSTER,  SIR  DAVID,  ON  THE  CUTTLE-FISH  AND  BELEMNITB     .               .  372 

BRORA  COAL  FIELD  OTHER  THAN  THE  TRUE  COAL-MEASURES              .  311 

BRORA  PEAT-MOSSES  OF  THE  OOLITE     .....               .  315 

CAUTION  TO  GEOLOGISTS  ON  THE  FINDING  OF  REMAINS              .              .  342 

CLAY-BED  OF  THE  NORTHERN  SUTOR,   LESSON  TO  YOUNG  GEOLOGISTS      ,  336 

CONGENERS  OF  THE  CUTTLE-FISH,  BELEMNITE,  ETC.          .              .              .  357 

COPROLITES  OF  THE  LIAS                  .......  365 

CROMARTY              .........  328 

CROMARTY,  CAVES  OF,  OR  THE  ART  OF  SEEING  OVER  THE  ART  OF  THEO- 
RIZING           .........  329 

CROMA-RTY  SUTOR,  LINE  OF             .......  335 

CUTTLE-FISH           .........  349 

DIPTERUS  MACROLEPIDOTUS,  ABUNDANT  IN  THE  BANNISKIRK  OLD  RED 

OF  CAITHNESS        .              .              .              .              .              .    '                         .  304 

EATHIE,  INTRUSIVE  DIKES  OF       .......  366 

ECONOMIC  GEOLOGY,  LONDON  MUSEUM  OF                 ....  313 

FOSSIL-WOOD  OF  THE  OOLITE  AT  HELMSDALE,  SUTHERLAND           .              .  306 


X  CONTENTS. 

GANOID  SCALES  AND  RATS      .......  801 

GLACIAL  APPEARANCES  AT  HIGO  AND   LOG  IK              ....  838 

GLACIERS  AND   MORAINES  Or  SUTHERLAND              ....  319 

GRANITIC    GNEISS    AND    SANDSTONE,   WITH    THE    CONDITIONS    OF    THEIR 

UPHEAVAL  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .346 

LEVEL  STEPPES  OF  RUSSIA,  AND  THEORY  OF  MORAINES      .               .               .  324 

MPT  ARIA,  OR  CEMENT-STONES,  OF  THE  LIAS           ....  847 

TKREBRATULA,  CONTEMPORARY  AND-KXTINCT  TYPES  OF  THK  LIFE  OF  870 

TRAVELLED  BOULDERS  NOT  ASSOCIATED  WITH  CLAY    ...  344 

TYPES,  RECENT,  OF  FOSSILS 810 

UNDERLYING  CLAY  ON  LEVEL  MOORS,  REMARKS  ON       ...  848 


THEORY  OF  THK  OCEAN'S  LEVEL          ......  875 

CHAIN  OF  CAUSES       ........  888 

RECENT  GEOLOGICAL  DISCOVERIES      ......  409 

SIR  RODERICK  MURCHIBON   ON    THK    RECENT    GEOLOGICAL    DISCOVERIES 

Ol  MORAT8HIRB     ...  419 


INTRODUCTORY   RESUME 


OP    THE 


PROGRESS  OF  GEOLOGICAL  SCIENCE. 


THE  following  Lectures,  with  "  The  Cruise  of  the  Betsey," 
and  "  Rambles  of  a  Geologist,"  are  all  that  remain  of  what 
Hugh  Miller  once  designed  to  be  his  Maximum  Opus,  —  THE 
GEOLOGY  OF  SCOTLAND.  It  is  well,  however,  that  his  ma- 
terials have  been  so  left  that  they  can  be  presented  to  the 
public  in  a  shape  perfectly  readable ;  furnishing  two  volumes, 
each  of  which,  it  is  hoped,  will  be  found  to  possess  in  itself  a 
uniform  and  intrinsic  interest  —  differing  in  matter  and  man- 
ner as  much  as  they  do  in  the  form  in  which  they  have  found 
an  embodiment.  That  form  is  simply  the  one  naturally  arising 
out  of  the  circumstances  of  the  Author's  life  as  they  occurred, 
instead  of  the  more  artificial  plan  designed  by  himself,  in  which 
these  circumstances  would  probably,  more  or  less,  if  not  alto- 
*-  gether,  have  disappeared.  Yet  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether 


lli  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

the  natural  method  does  not  possess  a  charm  which  any  more 
formal  arrangement  would  have  wanted.  Every  one  must  be 
struck  with  the  freshness,  buoyancy,  and  vigor  displayed  in  the 
"  Summer  Rambles ; " —  qualities  more  apparent  in  these  than 
even  in  his  more  labored  Autobiography,  of  which  they  are, 
indeed,  but  a  sort  of  unintentional  continuation.  They  were 
the  spontaneous  utterances  of  a  mind  set  free  from  an  occu- 
pation never  very  congenial,  —  that  of  writing  compulsory 
articles  for  a  newspaper,  —  to  find  refreshment  amid  the  fami- 
liar haunts  in  which  it  delighted,  and  to  seize,  with  a  grasp 
easy,  yet  powerful,  on  the  recreation  of  a  favorite  science,  as 
the  artist  seizes  on  the  pencil  from  which  he  has  been  sepa- 
rated for  a  time,  or  the  musician  on  some  instrument  much 
loved  and  long  lost,  which  he  well  knows  will,  as  it  yields  to 
him  its  old  music,  restore  vigor  artd  harmony  to  his  entire 
being.  My  dear  husband  did,  indeed,  bring  to  his  science  all 
that  fondness,  while  he  found  in  it  much  of  that  kind  of 
enjoyment,  which  we  are  wont  to  associate  exclusively  with  the 
love  of  art. 

The  delivery  of  these  Lectures  may  not  yet  have  passed 
quite  away  from  the  recollection  of  the  Edinburgh  public. 
They  excited  unusual  interest,  and  awakened  unusual  atten- 
tion, in  a  city  where  interest  in  scientific  matters,  and  attend- 
ance upon  lectures  of  a  very  superior  order,  are  affairs  of 
every-day  occurrence.  Rarely  have  I  seen  an  audience  so 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  13 

profoundly  absorbed.  And  at  the  conclusion  of  the  whole, 
when  the  lecturer's  success  had  been  triumphantly  established 
(for  it  must  be  remembered  that  lecturing  was  to  him  an 
experiment  made  late  in  life),  I  ventured  to  urge  the  propriety 
of  having  the  series  published  before  the  general  interest  had 
begun  to  subside.  His  reply  was,  "  I  cannot  afford  it.  I  have 
given  so  many  of  my  best  facts  and  broadest  ideas,  —  so  much, 
indeed,  of  what  would  be  required  to  lighten  the  drier  details 
in  my  '  Geology  of  Scotland,' —  that  it  would  never  do  to  pub- 
lish these  Lectures  by  themselves."  It  will  thus  be  seen  that 
they  veritably  gather  into  one  luminous  centre  the  best  por- 
tions of  his  contemplated  work,  garnering  very  much  of  what 
was  most  vivid  in  painting  and  original  in  conception,  —  of 
that  which  has  now,  alas!  glided,  with  himself,  into  those 
silent  shades  where  dwell  the  souls  of  the  departed,  with  the 
halo  of  past  thought  hovering  dimly  round  them,  waiting  for 
that  new  impulse  from  the  Divine  Spirit  which  is  to  quicken 
them  into  an  intenser  and  higher  unity. 

I  have  been  led  to  indulge  the  hope  that  this  work  will  be 
found  useful  in  giving  to  elementary  Geology  a  greater  attrac- 
tiveness in  the  eyes  of  the  student  than  it  has  hitherto  pos- 
sessed. It  was  characteristic  of  the  mind  of  its  author,  that  he 
valued  words,  and  even  facts,  as  only  subservient  to  the  high 
powers  of  reason  and  imagination.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
many  introductory  works,  especially  those  for  the  use  of 


14  INTRODUCTORY    RESUME: 

schools,  should  be  so  crammed  with  scientific  terms,  and  facts 
hard  packed,  and  not  always  well  chosen,  that  they  are  fitted 
to  remind  us  of  the  dragon's  teeth  sown  by  Jason,  which  sprung 
up  into  armed  men,  —  being  much  more  likely  to  repel,  than 
to  allure  into  the  temple  of  science.  One  might,  indeed,  as 
well  attempt  to  gain  an  acquaintance  with  English  literature 
solely  from  the  study  of  Johnson's  Dictionary,  as  to  acquire  an 
insight  into  the  nature  of  Geology  from  puzzling  over  such 
books.  But,  viewed  in  the  light  of  a  mind  which  had  ap- 
proached the  subject  by  quite  another  pathway,  all  unconscious, 
in  its  outset,  of  the  gatherings  and  recordings  of  others,  and 
which  never  made  a  single  step  of  progression  in  which  it  was 
not  guided  by  the  light  of  its  own  genius  and  the  inspiration 
of  nature,  it  may  be  regarded  by  beginners  in  another  aspect, 
—  one  very  different  from  that  in  which  Wordsworth  looked 
upon  it  when  he  thanked  Heaven  that  the  covert  nooks  of 
nature  reported  not  of  the  geologist's  hands,  —  "  the  man  who 
classed  his  splinter  by  some  barbarous  name,  and  hurried  on." 
At  that  time  the  poet  must  have  seen  but  the  cold,  hard  profile 
of  the  man,  instead  of  the  broad,  beaming,  full-orbed  glance 
which  he  may  have  cast  over  the  wondrous  aeons  of  the  past 
eternity. 

To  meet  any  difficulties  arising  from  misconception,  it  may 
be  proper  to  glance  rapidly  at  what  has  been  accomplished  in 
geological  research  within  the  last  two  years.  The  reader  will 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  15 

thus  avoid  the  painful  impression  that  there  are  any  suppressed 
facts  of  recent  date  which  clash  with  the  theories  of  the  suc- 
ceeding Lectures,  destroying  their  value  and  impairing  their 
unity.  And  it  may  be  well  to  remind  him  that  there  are  two 
schools  of  Geology,  quite  at  one  in  their  willingness  to  bring 
all  theories  to  the  test  of  actual  discovery,  but  widely  differing 
in  their  leanings  as  to  the  mode  in  which,  a  priori,  they  would 
wish  the  facts  brought  to  light  to  be  viewed.  ,  The  one,  as 
expounded  in  the  following  Lectures,  delights  in  the  unfolding 
of  a  great  plan,  having  its  original  in  the  Divine  Mind,  which 
has  gradually  fitted  the  earth  to  be  the  habitation  of  intelligent 
beings,  and  has  introduced  upon  the  stage  of  time  organism 
after  organism,  rising  in  dignity,  until  all  have  found  their 
completion  in  the  human  nature,  which,  in  its  turn,  is  a 
prophecy  of  the  spiritual  and  Divine.  This  may  be  said  to 
be  the  true  development  hypothesis,  in  opposition  to  the  false 
and  puerile  one,  which  has  been  discarded  by  all  geologists 
worthy  of  the  name,  of  whatsoever  side.  The  other  school 
holds  the  opinion  —  though,  perhaps,  not  very  decidedly  — 
that  all  things  have  been  from  the  beginning  as  they  are  now  ; 
and  that  if  evidence  at  the  present  moment  leans  to  the  side  of 
a  gradual  progress  and  a  serial  development,  it  is  because  so 
much  remains  undiscovered ;  the  hiatus,  wherever  it  occurs, 
being  always  in  our  own  knowledge,  and  not  in  the  actual  state 
of  things.  The  next  score  of  years  will  probably  bring  the 
matter  to  a  pretty  fair  decision ;  for  it  seems  impossible  that, 


16  INTRODUCTORY    RESUME: 

if  so  many  able  workers  continue  to  be  employed  as  industri- 
ously as  now  in  the  same  field,  the  remains  of  man  and  the 
higher  mammals  will  not  be  found  to  be  of  all  periods,  if  at  all 
periods  they  existed.  In  the  meantime,  it  is  well  to  know  the 
actual  point  to  which  discovery  has  conducted  us ;  and  this  I 
have  taken  every  pains  most  carefully  to  ascertain. 

The  Upper  Ludlow  rocks  —  the  uppermost  of  the  Silurians 
—  continue  to  be  the  lowest  point  at  which  fish  are  found. 
Up  to  that  period,  —  during  the  vast  ages  of  the  Cambrian, 
where  only  the  faintest  traces  of  animal  life  have  been  de- 
tected1 in  the  shape  of  annelides  or  sand-boring  worms,  — 
throughout  the  whole  range  of  the  Silurians,  where  shell-fish 
and  crustaceans,  with  inferior  forms  of  life  abounded,  —  no 
traces  of  fish,  the  lowest  vertebrate  existences  until  the 
lat.  -i  formed  beds  of  the  Upper  Silurian,  have  yet  appeared. 
There  are  now  six  genera  of  fish  ranked  as  Upper  Silurian,  — 
Auchenaspis,  Cephalaspis,  Pteraspis,  Plectrodus,  Onchus  Mur- 
chisoni,  and  Sphagodus.  The  two  latter — Onchus  Murchisoni 
and  Sphagodus  —  are  represented  by  bony  defences,  such  as 
are  possessed  by  placoid  fishes  of  the  present  day.  Sir  Rod- 
erick Murchison  at  one  time  entertained  the  idea  of  placing 
the  Ludlow  bone-bed  at  the  base  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone ; 
but  its  fish  liaving  been  found  decidedly  associated  with  Silu- 
rian organisms,  this  idea  has  been  abandoned. 

»  See  the  lately  published  edition  of  Sir  Roderick  Murchison's  "  Siluria," 
chap.  ii.  p.  26- 


PROGRESS   OF  GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  17 

The  next  point  to  which  public  attention  has  been  specially 
directed,  is  the  discovery  of  mammals  lower  than  they  had 
formerly  appeared.  Considerable  misconception  has  arisen  on 
this  head.  The  Middle  Purbeck  beds,  recently  explored  by 
Mr.  Beckles,  in  which  various  small  mammals  were  found, 
occur  considerably  farther  up  than  the  Stonesfield  slates,  in 
which  the  first  quadruped  was  detected  so  far  back  as  1818. 
But  this  discovery  involves  no  theoretical  change,  inasmuch  as 
all  the  mammalian  remains  of  the  Middle  Purbecks  consist  of 
small  marsupials  and  insectivora,  varying  in  size  from  a  rat  to 
a  hedgehog,  with  one  or  two  doubtful  species,  not  yet  proved 
to  be  otherwise.  The  living  analogue  of  one  very  interesting 
genus  is  the  kangaroo  rat,  which  inhabits  the  prairies  and 
scrub-jungles  o£  Australia,  feeding  on  plants  and  scratched-up 
roots.  Between  the  English  Stonesfield  or  Great  Oolite,  in 
which,  many  years  ago,  four  species  of  these  small  mammals 
were  known  to  exist,  and  the  Middle  Purbeck,  quarried  by 
Mr.  Beckles,  in  which  fourteen,  species  are  now  found,  there 
intervene  the  Oxford  Clay,  Coral  Rag,  Kimmeridge  Clay, 
Portland  Oolite,  and  Lower  Purbeck  Oolite ;  and  then,  after 
the  Middle  Purbeck,  there  occurs  a  great  hiatus  throughout 
the  Weald,  Green  Sand,  Gault,  and  Chalk,  wherein  no  quad- 
rupedal remains  have  been  found ;  until  at  length  we  are 
introduced,  in  the  Tertiary,  to  the  dawn  of  the  grand  mamma- 
lian period;  so  that  nothing  has  occurred  in  this  department 
to  occasion  any  revolution  in  the  ideas  of  those  who,  with  my 

2* 


18  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

hu>band,  consider  a  succession  and  development  of  type  to  be 
the  one  great  fixed  law  of  geological  science.  The  reader  will 
see  that  in  the  end  of  Lecture  Third  such  remains  as  have 
been  found  lower  than  the  Tertiary  are  expressly  recognized 
and  excepted.  "  Save,"  says  the  author,  "  in  the  dwarf  and 
inferior  forms  of  the  marsupials  and  insectivora,  not  any  of  the 
honest  mammals  have  yet  appeared." 

But  while  attaching  no  importance  to  the  discoveries  in  the 
Middle  Purbeck,  except  in  regard  of  more  ample  numerical 
development,  it  is  necessary  to  admit  the  evidence  of  marsu- 
pials having  been  found  lower  than  the  Stonesfield  or  Great 
Oolite;  even  so  far  back  as  the  Upper  Trias,  the  Keuper 
Sandstone  of  Germany,  which  lies  at  the  base*of  the  Lias.  I 
must  be  permitted,  on  this  point,  to  quote  the  authority  of  Sir 
Roderick  Murchison,  as  one  of  the  safest  and  most  cautious 
exponents  of  geological  fact.  "  In  that  deposit,"  says  he, 
referring  to  the  Keuper  Sandstone  of  Wurtemberg,  "  the 
relics  of  a  solitary  small  marsupial  mammal  have  been  ex- 
humed, which  its  discoverer,  Plieninger,  has  named  Mtcrolestcs 
Antiquus.  Again,  Dr.  Ebenezer  Emmons,  the  well-known 
geologist,  of  Albany,  in  the  United  States,  has  described,  from 
the  lower  beds  of  the  Chatham  Secondary  Coal-field,  North 
1  >!ina  (of  the  same  age  as  those  of  Virginia,  and  probably 
of  the  Wurtemberg  Keuper),  the  jaws  of  another  minute  mam- 
mal, which  he  calls  Dromotherium  Sylvestre.  Lastly,  while  I 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  19 

write,  Mr.  C.  Moore  has  detected  in  an  agglomerate  which 
fills  the  fissures  of  the  carboniferous  limestone  near  Frome, 
Somersetshire,  the  teeth  of  marsupial  mammals,  one  of  which 
he  considers  to  be  closely  related  to  the  Microkstes  Antiquus 
of  Germany,  and  Professor  Owen  confirms  the  fact.  From 
that  coincidence,  and  also  from  the  association  with  other  ani- 
mal remains,  —  the  Placodus  (a  reptile  of  the  Muschelkalk), 
and  certain  mollusca,  —  Mr  Moore  believes  that  these  patches 
represent  the  Keuper  of  Germany.  If  this  view  should  be 
sustained,  this  author,  who  has  already  made  remarkable 
additions  to  our  acquaintance  with  the  organic  remains  of  the 
Oolitic  rocks  and  the  Lias,  will  have  had  the  merit  of  having 
discovered  the  first  traces  of  mammalia  in  any  British  stratum 
below  the  Stonesfield  slates."  .  .  .  .  "  Let  me  entreat," 
says  Sir  Roderick,  in  a  passage  occurring  shortly  after  that  we 
have  quoted,  "  Let  me  entreat  the  reader  not  to  be  led  by  the 
reasoning  of  the  ablest  physiologist,  or  by  an  appeal  to  minute 
structural  affinities,  to  impugn  the  clear  and  exact  facts  of  a 
succession  from  lower  to  higher  grades  of  life  in  each  forma- 
tion. Let  no  one  imagine  that  because  the  bony  characters  in 
the  jaw  and  teeth  of  the  Plagiaulax  of  the  Purbeck  strata  are 
such  as  the  comparative  anatomist  might  have  expected  to  find 
among  existing  marsupials,  and  that  the  animal  is,  therefore, 
far  removed  from  the  embryonic  archetype,  such  an  argument 
disturbs  the  order  of  succession  of  classes,  as  seen  in  the  crust 
of  the  earth."  So  far  from  disturbing  the  order  of  succession, 


20  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

it  is,  we  conceive,  of  exceeding  interest  to  find  the  Mesozoic 
period  marked  in  its  commencement,  as  it  most  probably  will 
be  found  to  be,  by  the  introduction  of  a  form  of  being  so 
entirely  different  from  any  that  preceded  it  It  seems  to  us  to 
bring  the  true  development  hypothesis  into  a  clearer  and  more 
harmonious  unity.  The  great  period  during  which  the  little 
annelide  or  sand-boring  worm  was  the  sole  tenant  of  this  wide 
earth,  —  its  first  inhabitant  after  the  primeval  void, —  has 
passed.  The  aeon  of  the  Mollusc  and  the  Crustacean  follows. 
At  its  close  appear  the  first  fishes,  very  scanty  in  point  of 
numbers  and  of  species,  but  multiplying  into  many  genera, 
and  swarming  in  countless  myriads,  as  the  Devonian  ages  wear 
on.  Again,  towards  the  termination  of  the  latter,  appear  the 
first  reptiles,  which,  during  the  Carboniferous  and  Permian 
eras,  reign  as  the  master-existences  of  creation.  But  Palaeozic 
or  ancient  life  passes  away,  and  the  Mesozoic  or  Middle  period 
is  marked  not  only  by  countless  forms,  all  specifically,  and 
many  of  them  generically,  new,  but  by  another  wholly  un- 
known, either  as  genus  or  species,  during  all  the  past.  The 
little  marsupials  and  insectivora  appear  "perfect  after  their 
kind,"  and  yet  only  the  harbingers  of  the  great  mammalian 
period  which  is  yet  to  come.  In  the  volume  of  Creation,  as 
in  that  of  Providence,  God's  designs  are  wrapt  in  profound 
niy-tory  until  their  completion.  And  yet  in  each  it  would 
appear  that  He  sends  a  prophetic  messenger  to  prepare  the 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  21 

way,  in  which  the  clear-sighted  eye,  intent  to  read  His  pur 
poses,  may  discern  some  sign  of  the  approaching  future. 

Before  we  proceed,  we  must  here,  on  behalf  of  the  un- 
learned, and  therefore  the  more  easily  misled,  most  humbly 
venture  to  reclaim  against  the  use,  on  the  part  of  men  of  the 
very  highest  standing,  of  the  loose  and  dubious  phraseology  in 
which  they  sometimes  indulge,  and  which  serves  greatly  to 
perplex,  if  not  to  lead  to  very  erroneous  conclusions. 

"In  respect  to  no  one  class  of  animals,"  says  Professor 
Owen,  in  his  last  Address  to  the  British  Association,  "has 
the  manifestation  of  creative  force  been  limited  to  one  epoch 
of  tune."  This,  translated  into  fact,  can  only  mean  that  the 
vertebrate  type  had  its  representative  in  the  fish  of  the  earliest 
or  Silurian  epoch,  and  has  continued  to  exist  throughout  all 
the  epochs  which  succeeded  it.  But  the  difficulty  lies  in  the 
translation ;  for,  at  first  sight,  the  conclusion  is  inevitable,  to 
the  general  reader,  that  not  only  the  lowest  class  of  vertebrate 
existence,  but  also  man  and  the  higher  mammals,  had  been 
found  from  the  beginning,  and  that  the  highest  and  the  lowest 
forms  of  being  were  at  all  periods  contemporary.  No  one, 
surely,  would  have  a  right  to  make  such  a  prodigious  stride  in 
the  line  of  inference,  on  the  presumption  of  supposed  evidence 
yet  to  come.  Again,  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  in  his  supplement  to 
the  fifth  edition  of  his  "  Elementary  Geology,"  says,  in  speak- 


22  INTRODUCTORY    RESUME: 

ing  of  these  same  Purbeck  beds  quarried  by  Mr.  Beckle?. 
"  They  afford  the  first  positive  proof,  as  yet  obtained,  of  the 
coexistence  of  a  varied  fauna  of  the  highest  class  of  vertebrata 
with  that  ample  development  of  reptile  life  which  marks  the 
periods  from  the  Trias  to  the  Lower  Cretaceous  inclusive." 
Are  marsupials  and  insectivora  the  highest  class  of  vertebrata  ? 
Where,  then,  do  the  great  placental  mammals  —  where  does 
man  himself —  take  rank  ? 

It  were  surely  to  be  desired  that  some  stricter  and  more 
invariable  form  of  phraseology  were  adopted,  either  in  accord- 
ance with  the  divisions  of  Cuvier,  or  some  analogous  system, 
adherence  to  which  would  be  clearly  defined  and  understood. 
Why  should  not  the  words  class,  order,  type,  have  as  invariable 
a  meaning  as  genera  and  species,  which,  having  an  application 
more  limited,  are  seldom  mistaken  ?  We  are  aware  that  such 
terms  are  often  used  by  the  learned  in  an  indefinite  and  trans- 
latable sense,  just  as  to  the  learned  in  languages  it  may  be  a 
matter  of  indifference  whether  the  written  characters  which 
convey  information  to  them  be  Roman,  Hebrew,  or  Chinese. 
But  it  should  be  remembered  that  there  is  a  large  class  outside 
which  seeks  to  be  addressed  in  a  plain  vernacular  —  which 
asks,  first  of  all,  definiteness  in  the  use  of  terms  to  which  prob- 
ably they  have  already  sought  to  attach  some  fixed  sense ;  and 
that  it  is  not  well  to  unship  the  rudder  of  their  thought,  and 
send  them  back  to  sea  again. 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  23 

The  next  point  which  demands  attention  in  our  short  resume 
is  that  great  break  between  the  Permian  and  Triassic  systems, 
across  which,  as  stated  in  the  following  pages,  not  a  single 
species  has  found  its  way.  Much  attention  has  been  given  to 
the  great  Hallstad  or  St.  Cassian  beds,  which  lie  on  the  north- 
ern and  southern  declivities  of  the  Austrian  Alps.  These  beds 
belong  to  the  Upper  Trias,  and  they  contain  more  genera  com- 
mon to  Palaeozoic  and  newer  rocks  than  were  formerly  known. 
There  are  ten  genera  peculiarly  Triassic,  ten  common  to  older, 
and  ten  to  newer  strata.  Among  these,  the  most  remarkable 
is  the  Orthoceras,  which  was  before  held  to  be  altogether 
Palaeozoic,  but  is  here  found  associated  with  the  Ammonites 
and  Belemnites  of  the  secondary  period.1  The  appearance  of 
this,  with  a  few  other  familiar  forms,  serves,  in  our  imagina- 
tion at  least,  to  lessen  the  distance,  and,  in  some  small  measure, 
to  bridge  over  the  chasm,  between  Palaeozoic  and  Secondary 
life.  And  yet,  considering  the  vast  change  which  then  passed 
over  our  planet,  —  that  all  specific  forms  died  out,  while  new 
ones  came  to  occupy  fcheir  room,  —  the  discovery  of  a  few  more 
connecting  generic  links  in  the  rudimentary  shell-alphabet, 
which  serve  but  to  show  that  in  all  changes  the  God  of  the 
past  is  likewise  the  God  of  the  present,  no  more  affects  in 
reality  this  one  great  revolution,  the  completeness  of  which  is 
marked  by  the  very  difficulty  of  finding,  amid  so  much  new 

1  See  Sir  Charles  Lyell's  "  Supplement "  for  corroboration  of  the  forego- 
ing statements. 


24  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

and  redundant  life,  a  single  identical  specific  variety,  than  the 
well-known  existence  of  the  Terebratula  in  the  earliest,  as  well 
as  in  the  existing  seas,  can  efface  the  great  ground-plan  of 
successive  geological  eras.1  Nor  does  it  explain  the  matter  to 
say  that  geographical  changes  took  place,  bringing  with  them 
the  denizens  of  different  climates,  and  adapted  for  different 
modes  of  life.  The  same  Almighty  Power  which  now  pro- 
vides habitats  and  conditions  suitable  for  the  wants  of  his 
creatures,  would,  doubtless,  have  done  so  during  all  the  past. 
Geographical  changes  are  at  all  times  indissolubly  connected 
with  changes  in  the  conditions  of  being ;  and  they  serve,  in  so 
far,  to  explain  the  rule  in  the  stated  order  of  geological  events, 
when  a  due  proportion  of  extinct  and  of  novel  forms  are  found 
coexistent.  But  how  can  they  explain  the  exception  ?  A 
singular  effect  must  have  a  singular  cause.  And  when  we 
find  that  there  were  changes  relating  to  the  world's  inhabitants 
altogether  singular  and  abnormal  in  their  revolutionary  char- 
acter, we  must  infer  that  the  medial  causes  of  which  the  Crea- 
tor made  use  were  of  a  singular  and  abnormal  character  also. 
On  this  head  the  best-informed  ought  to  speak  with  extreme 
diffidence.  We  can  but  imagine  that  there  may  have  been  a 
long,  immeasurable  period,  during  which  a  subsidence,  so  to 
speak,  took  place  in  the  creative  energy,  and  during  which  all 
specific  forms,  one  after  another,  died  out,  —  the  lull  of  a  dying 

l  See   Terebratula,  page  111.     The  extinct  Terebratnla  is  now  called 
Rhrnronclla. 


PROGRESS    OF    GEOLOGICAL    SCIENCE.  25 

creation,  —  and  then  a  renewal  of  the  impulsive  force  from 
that  Divine  Spirit  which  brooded  over  the  face  of  the  earliest 
chaotic  deep,  producing  geographical  changes,  more  or  less 
rapid,  which  should  prepare  the  way  for  the  next  stage  in  our 
planetary  existence,  —  its  new  framework,  and  its  fresh  burden 
of  vital  beings. 

The  other  great  break  in  the  continuity  of  fossils,  which 
occurs  between  the  Chalk  and  the  Tertiary,  seems  to  be  very 
much  in  the  same  condition  with  that  of  which  we  have  just 
spoken.  New  connecting  genera  have  been  discovered,  but 
still  not  a  single  identical  species.  Jukes,  in  his  "  Manual," 
published  at  the  end  of  last  year,  says  :  "  Near  Maastricht,  in 
Holland,  the  chalk,  with  flint,  is  covered  by  a  kind  of  chalky 
rock,  with  gray  flints,  over  which  are  loose,  yellowish  lime- 
stones, sometimes  almost  made  up  of  fossils."  Similar  beds 
also  occur  at  Saxoe  in  Denmark.  Together  with  true  creta- 
ceous fossils,  such  as  pecten  and  quadricostatus,  these  beds 
contain  species  of  the  genera  Voluta,  Fasciolaria,  Cyprea, 
Oliva,  etc.,  etc.,  several  of  which  GENERA  are  also  found  else- 
where in  the  Tertiary  rocks.1 

Sir  Roderick  Murchison's  late  explorations  in  the  Highlands 
—  although,  of  course,  local  in  their  character  —  have  made  a 


1  A  doubt  has,  nevertheless,  been  expressed  whether  these  are  not  bro- 
ken-up  Tertinries. 

3 


INTRODUCTORY   KKSt.Mi:: 


change  in  the  GEOLOGY  OF  SCOTLAND.  The 
next  edition  of  the  "Old  li<-d  Sandstone"  will  be  the  most  fit- 
ting place  to  speak  of  these  at  length  ;  and  I  have  some  reason 
to  believe  that  Sir  Roderick  himself  will  then  favor  me  with  a 
communication  giving  some  account  of  them.  Suffice  it  at 
present  to  say,  that  the  supposed  Old  Red  Conglomerate  of  the 
Western  Highlands,  as  laid  down  in  the  year  1827  by  Sir 
Roderick  himself,  accompanied  by  Professor  Sedgwick,  and  so 
far  acquiesced  in  by  my  husband,  although  he  always  wrote 
doubtfully  on  the  subject,  has  now  been  ascertained  to  be,  not 
Old  Red,  but  Silurian.  In  Sir  Roderick's  last  Address  to  the 
British  Association,  he  says  :  "  Professor  Sedgwick  and  him- 
self had,  thirty-one  years  ago,  ascertained  an  ascending  order 
from  gneiss,  covered  by  quartz  rocks,  with  limestone,  into 
(»  vc  Hying  quartzose,  micaceous,  and  other  crystalline  rocks, 
-oini'  of  which  have  a  gneissose  character.  They  had  also 
observed  what  they  supposed  to  be  an  associated  formation  of 
red  grit  and  sandstone  ;  but  the  exact  relations  of  this  to  the 
crystalline  rocks  was  not  ascertained,  owing  to  bad  weather. 
In  the  meantime,  they,  as  well  as  all  subsequent  geologists,  had 
erred  in  believing  the  great  and  lofty  masses  of  purple  and  red 
conglomerate  of  the  western  coast  were  of  the  same  age  as 
on  the  east,  and  therefore  'Old  Red  Sandstone.'  .  .  . 
Xicol  had  suggested  that  the  quartzites  and  lime- 
stones illicit  1)0  the  equivalent  of  the  Carboniferous  system  of 
th«-  .-oiith  of  Sri>tl:md.  Wholly  dis-cnting  from  that  hypoth- 


PROGRESS    OF    GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  27 

esis,  ho  (Sir  Roderick)  had  urged  Mr.  Peach  to  avail  himself 
of  his  first  leisure  moments  to  reexamine  the  fossil-beds  of 
Durness  and  Assynt,  and  the  result  was  the  discovery  of  so 
many  forms  of  undoubted  Lower  Silurian  characters  (deter- 
mined by  Mr.  Salter),  that  the  question  has  been  completely 
set  at  rest — there  being  now  no  less  than  nineteen  or  twenty 
species  of  M'Lurea,  Murchisonia,  Cephalita,  and  Orthoceras, 
with  an  Orthis,  etc.,  of  which  ten  or  eleven  occur  in  the 
Lower  Silurian  rocks  of  North  America." 

This  change  would  demand  an  entirely  new  map  of  the 
Geology  of  Scotland ;  for  there  is  clearly  ascertained  to  be  an 
ascending  series  from  west  to  east,  beginning  with  an  older  or 
primitive  gneiss,  on  which  a  Cambrian  conglomerate,  and  over 
that  again  a  band  containing  the  Silurian  fossils,  rest ;  while  a 
younger  gneiss  occupies  a  portion  of  the  central  nucleus,  hav- 
ing the  Old  Red  Sandstone  series  on  the  eastern  side.  A 
change  has  likewise  been  made  in  the  internal  arrangements 
of  the  Old  Red,  of  which  the  next  edition  of  my  husband's 
work  on  the  subject  will  be  the  proper  place  to  speak  in  detail. 
In  the  meantime,  I  may  just  mention,  that  the  Caithness  and 
Cromarty  beds  have  been  found  to  occupy,  not  the  lowest,  but 
the  central  place,  —  the  lowest  being  assigned  to  the  Forfar- 
ghire  beds,  containing  Cephalaspis,  associated  with  Pteraspis, 
an  organism  characteristically  Silurian.  That  which  bears 
most  upon  the  subject  before  us,  is  the  now  perfectly  ascer- 


28  INTRODUCTORY    RESUME  : 

tained  imprint  of  the  footsteps  of  large  reptiles  in  the  Elgin  or 
uppermost  formation  of  the  Old  Red.  A  shade  of  doubt  had 
rested  upon  the  discovery  made  many  years  ago  by  Mr.  Pat- 
rick DulF,  of  the  Telerpeton  Elginense,  not  as  to  the  real  nature 
of  the  fossil,  which  is  indisputably  a  small  lizard,  but  as  to 
whether  the  stratum  in  which  it  was  found  belonged  to  the 
Old  Red,  or  to  the  formation  immediately  above  it.  It  will  be 
observed,  however,  that  the  existence  of  reptiles  in  the  Old 
Red  did  not  rest  altogether  upon  this,  because  the  footprints 
of  large  animals  of  the  same  class  had  been  ascertained  in  the 
United  States  of  America.  I  cannot  but  conceive,  therefore, 
that  Mr.  Duff,  in  a  recent  letter  or  paper  read  in  Elgin,  and 
published  in  the  Elgin  and  MoraysJtire  Courier,  makes  too 
much  of  the  recent  discoveries  in  his  neighborhood,  when  he 
rtfl  that  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  had  been  hitherto -consid- 
ered exclusively  a  jish  formation,  and  that  the  appearance  of 
reptiles  is  altogether  novel.  "  Now,"  says  he,  "  that  the  Old 
Re.d  Sandstones  of  Moray  have  acquired  some  celebrity,  it 
may  not  be  unprofitable  to  trace  the  different  stages  by  which 
the  discovery  was  arrived  at  of  reptilian  remains  in  that  very 
ancient  system,  which  till  now  was  held  to  have  been  peopled  by 
n»  higher  order  of  beings  than  fs/tes."  Mr.  Duff  forgets  that 
in  the  programme,  as  it  may  be  called,  given  by  my  husband, 
of  the  introduction  of  different  types  of  animal  life,  as  ascer- 
tainr.l  in  his  d:iy.  reptiles  are  made  to  occupy  preci-ely  the 
ion  tln-y  do  now.  To  rci're.-h  the  memory  of  the  reader, 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE. 


29 


I  shall  here  reproduce  it,  as  given  in  the  "  Testimony  of  the 
Rocks."     At  page  45  is  this  diagram  : 


Silurian. 
Old  Red. 

Carboniferous. 

Permian. 
Triassio. 

Oolitic. 
Cretaceous. 

Tertiary. 
Recent. 


.Had.  Art.  Mol. 
Fishes. 

Reptiles. 

Birds. 
Mam  mala. 

Fla.  Mam. 
i  Man. 

Geologic  [Rail.  Art.    Mol.  Fish.  Rep.  Bird.  Mam.  Man.]  arrangement. 
Cuvicr's  [Rail.  Art.    Mol.  Fish.  Rep.  Bird.  Mam.  Man.]  arrangement. 


THE    GENEALOGY    OF   ANIMALS 


And  on  the  following  page  occurs  this  comment :  "  In  the 
many-folded  pages  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  till  we  reach  the 
highest  and  last,  there  occur  the  remains  of  no  other  verte- 
brates than  those  of  this  fourth  class  [fishes] ;  but  in  its  upper- 
most deposits  there  appear  traces  of  the  third  or  reptilian  class ; 
and  in  passing  upwards  still,  through  the  Carboniferous,  Per- 
mian, and  Triassic  systems,  we  find  reptiles  continuing  the 
master-existences  of  the  time."  And  at  page  104,  express 
allusion  is  made  to  the  Tclerpeton  Elginense,  with  the  doubt 

3* 


SO  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

a;  !o  tin-  nature  of  its  locale  very  slightly  touched  upon.1  All 
tliis  Mr.  Duff  has  forgotten,  apparently;  and  it  appears  like- 
wi-c  not  to  have  come  within  his  cognizance  that  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  distinctly  recognizes  his  Telerpeton,  as  well  as  the 
American  foot-prints,  an<l  assigns  both  their  proper  places,  in 
tin-  la-t  edition  of  his  "Principles."  Even  in  the  edition  before 
the  last  of  the  "  Siluria,"  almost  the  first  thing  that  meets  us,  on 
oMfiiinx  it  :it  Chapter  Tenth,  which  treats  of  the  Old  Red 
Sand-toae,  is  a  print  of  the  fossil  skeleton  of  this  same  Teler- 
peton 1-lliji  iii-nse —  its  true  place  assigned  to  it  with  quite  as 
much  certainty  as  now !  These  very  singular  lapses  in  mem- 
ory seem  not  to  be  peculiar  to  Mr.  Duff.  I  have  seen  it 
>tat«-il.  in  an  anonymous  article  published  in  a  widely-circu- 
lated journal,8  and  in  connection  with  the  discovery  of  the 
KL'in  reptile  foot-prints,  that  Hugh  Miller  considered  the  Old 
U-  d  Satid-icnie  to  have  been  a  shoreless  ocean  without  a  tree!3 
—  utterly  ignoring  the  fact  that  he  was  himself  the  discoverer 
of  the  first  Old  Red  fossil-wood  of  a  coniferous  character,  and 

1  Tli is  doubt,  I  see  by  Sir  Roderick  Murchison's  latest  Address  to  the 

Association,  is  not  yet  entirely  obviated.     See  pajre  I •_'•_'. 

-  For  this  article,  as  an  excellent  specimen  of  its  elass,  see  pajrc  409, 

under  the  I  •  ,1  Discoveries;"  and,  in  contradistinction 

to  it,  the  extract  from  Sir  R.  Murchison's  Address  oti<?ht  to  be  can-fully 

!      I  myself  had  seen  neither  that  extract,  nor  the  recent  "  Siluria," 

until  after  this  -Oiort  sketch  was  in  type,— the  references  to  the  latter  Imv- 

•  '-n  introduced  afterwards,— ami  it  may  be  conceived  with  what  feel- 

>t  gratification  I  have  perused  Sir  Roderick's  repeated  assurances  of 

to  the  "01,1  Li-ht." 
»  8.-e  Contra,  p 


PROGRESS    OF    GEOLOGICAL    SCIENCE.  31 

that  he  thence  expressly  infers  the  then  existence  of  vegetation 
of  a  high  order.  Is  it  not  enough  to  add  to  the  store  of 
knowledge  without  attempting  to  undermine  all  that  has  gone 
before  ?  Must  the  discovery  of  an  additional  reptile,  a  few 
additional  marsupials,  be  the  signal  for  the  immediate  outcry, 
"All  is  changed;  the  former  things  have  passed  away;  all 
things  have  become  new  ?  "  My  husband  was  solicitous  even 
to  the  point  of  nervous  anxiety  to  exclude  from  his  writings 
every  particle  of  error,  whether  of  facts,  or  of  the  conclusions 
to  be  drawn  from  them.  Much  rather  would  he  never  have 
written  at  all  than  feel  himself  in  any  degree  a  false  teacher. 
"  Truth  first,  come  what  may  afterwards,"  was  his  invariable 
motto.  In  the  same  spirit,  God  enabling  me,  I  have  been 
desirous  to  carry  on  the  publication  of  his  posthumous  writ- 
ings. God  forbid  that  one  entrusted  with  such  sacred  guar- 
dianship should  seek  to  pervert  or  suppress  a  single  truth, 
actual  or  presumptive,  even  though  its  evidence  were  to  over- 
throw, in  a  single  hour,  all  his  much-loved  speculations  —  all 
his  reasonings,  so  long  cogitated,  so  conscientiously  wrought 
ought  Yet  I  must  confess  that  I  was  at  first  startled  and 
alarmed  by  rumors  of  changes  and  discoveries,  which,  I  was 
told,  were  to  overturn  at  once  the  science  of  Geology  as  hith- 
erto received,  and  all  the  evidences  which  had  been  drawn 
from  it  in  favor  of  revealed  religion.  Though  well  persuaded 
that  at  all  times,  and  by  the  most  unexpected  methods,  the  Most 
High  is  able  to  assert  Himself,  the  proneness  of  man  to  make 


32  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

use  of  every  unoccupied  position  in  order  to  maintain  his 
independence  of  his  Maker,  seemed  about  to  gain  new  vigor 
by  acquiring  a  fresh  vantage-ground.  The  old  cry  of  the 
eternity  of  matter,  and  the  "  all  things  remain  as  they  were 
Inn  11  the  beginning  until  now,"  rung  in  my  ears.  God  with 
us,  in  the  world  of  science  henceforth  to  be  no  more !  The 
very  evidences  of  His  being  seemed  about  to  be  removed  into 
a  more  distant  and  dimmer  region,  and  a  dreary  swamp  of 
infidelity  spread  onwards  and  backwards  throughout  the  past 
eternity. 

Without  stopping  to  inquire  whether  —  although  the  science 
of  Geology  had  been  revolutionized  —  those  fears  were  not 
altogether  exaggerated,  it  is  enough  at  present  to  know,  that, 
as  Geology  has  not  been  revolutionized,  there  is  no  need  to 
entertain  the  question.  I  trust  I  have  at  least  succeeded  in 
furnishing  the  reader  with  such  references  —  few  and  simple 
when  we  once  know  where  to  find  them  —  as  may  enable  him 
to  decide  upon  this  important  matter  for  himself.  If  I  have 
learned  anything  in  the  course  of  the  investigations  which  I 
been  endeavoring  to  make,  it  is  to  take  nothing  upon 
credence,  but  to  wait  patiently  for  all  the  evidence  which  can 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  subject  before  me;  and  this,  I 
li'-lieve,  is  the  only  way  to  make  any  approximation  to  a  cor- 
rect opinion.  In  truth,  the  science  of  Geology  is  itself  in  that 
condition,  that  no  fact  ought  to  be  accepted  as  a  basis  for 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  33 

reasoning  of  a  solid  kind,  until  it  has  run  the  round  of  investi- 
gation by  the  most  competent  authorities,  and  has  stood  the 
test  of  time.  It  is  peculiarly  subject  to  the  cry  of  Lo,  here ! 
and  lo,  there !  from  false  and  imperfectly  informed  teachers ; 
and  I  .believe  the  men  most  thoroughly  to  be  relied  on  are 
those  who  are  the  slowest  to  theorize,  the  last  to  form  a 
judgment,  and  who  require  the  largest  amount  of  evidence 

before  that  judgment  is  finally  pronounced. 

• 

In  addition  to  the  inspection  of  my  ever  kind  and  generous 
friend  Mr.  Symonds,1 1  have  submitted  the  following  pages  to 
the  reading  of  Mr.  Geikie,2  of  the  Geological  Survey,  who  has 
here  and  there  furnished  a  note.  Of  the  amount  and  correct- 
ness of  his  knowledge,  acquired  chiefly  in  the  field  and  in  the 
course  of  his  professional  duties,  my  husband  had  formed  the 
highest  opinion.  Indeed,  I  believe  he  looked  upon  him  as  the 
individual  who  would  most  probably  be  his  successor  as  an 
exponent  of  Scottish  Geology.  One  who  walks,  on  an  aver- 
age, twenty  miles  per  day,  and  who  has  submitted  nearly 
every  rood  of  the  soil  to  the  accurate  inspection  demanded  by 
the  Survey,  must  be  one  whose  opinion,  in  all  that  pertains  to 
Scottish  Geology  in  especial,  must  be  well  worth  the  having. 
I  have  to  add  an  expression  of  most  grateful  thanks  to  Sir 

1  The  Rev.  W.  S.  Symonds,  author  of  "  Old  Stones,"  "  Stones  of  the 
Valley,"  etc.,  and  the  compiler  of  the  index  to  the  recent  edition  of  Sir  R. 
Murchison's  "  Siluria." 

2  Archibald  Geikie,  Esq.,  author  of  "The  Story  of  a  Boulder-" 


34  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME: 

Roderick  Murchison,  for  his  prompt  attention  to  sundry  appli. 
cations  which  I  was  constrained  to  make  to  him.  His  letters 
have  been  of  the  utmost  importance  in  enabling  me  to  perceive 
clearly  the  alterations  which  have  taken  place  in  our  Scotti-h 
Geology,  and  the  reasons  for  them.  One  feels  instantaneously 
the  benefit  of  contact  with  a  master-mind.  A  few  sentences, 
a  few  strokes  of  the  pen,  throw  more  light  on  the  subject  than 

volumes  from  an  inferior  hand. 

• 

It  remains  now  only  to  explain,  that  this  course  of  Lec- 
tures, as  delivered  before  the  Philosophical  Institution,  con- 
sisted of  eight,  instead  of  six.  Those  now  published  are  com- 
plete, according  to  their  limits,  in  all  that  relates  to  the  facts, 
literal  or  picturesque,  of  the  subject;  and  the  last  two  of  the 
series  will  be  found  in  "  The  Testimony  of  the  Rocks,"  under 
the  heads  of"  Geology  in  its  Bearing  on  the  Two  Theologies," 
and  "The  Mosaic  Vision  of  Creation."  If  it  had  been  within 
the  contemplation  of  the  author  to  publish  the  six  Lectures  as 
they  now  stand,  these  last  two  would  have  formed  their  natural 

* 

climax  or  peroration.  And,  accordingly,  I  entertained  some 
thought  of  republishing  them  here,  in  order  that  the  reader 
might  enjoy  the  advantage  of  having  the  whole  under  his  eye 
at  once.  But,  as  they  are  not  in  any  way  necessary  to  the 
completion  of  the  sense,  and  perhaps  Geology,  viewed  simply 
by  it-elf,  and  in  the  light  of  a  popular  study,  is  as  well  freed 
from  extraneous  matter,  it  was  thought  best,  on  the  whole,  to 


PROGRESS   OF   GEOLOGICAL   SCIENCE.  85 

refer  the  reader  who  wishes  to  see  the  eight  discourses  in  their 
original  connection,  to  "  The  Testimony  of  the  Rocks." 

I  have,  instead,  added  an  Appendix  of  rather  a  novel  char- 
acter. In  addition  to  the  "  Cruise  of  the  Betsey,"  and  "  Ten* 
Thousand  Miles  over  the  Fossiliferous  Deposits  of  Scotland," 
there  was  left  a  volume  of  papers  unpublished  as  a  whole, 
entitled  "  A  Tour  through  the  Northern  Counties  of  Scotland." 
They  had,  however,  been  largely  drawn  upon  in  various  other 
works ;  but,  scattered  throughout  were  passages  of  more  or  less 
value,  which  I  had  not  met  with  elsewhere ;  and  some  such, 
of  the  descriptive  kind,  I  have  culled  and  arranged  at  the  end 
of  the  Lectures :  first,  because  I  was  loth  that  any  original 
observation  from  that  mind  which  should  never  think  again  for 
the  instruction  of  others,  should  be  lost,  and  also  because  many 
of  those  passages  were  of  a  kind  which  might  prove  suggestive 
to  the  student,  and  assist  him  in  reasoning  upon  those  phenom- 
ena of  ordinary  occurrence,  without  close  observation  of  which 
no  one  can  ever  arrive  at  a  successful  interpretation  of  nature. 
If  the  reader  should  descry  aught  of  repetition  which  has 
escaped  my  notice,  I  must  crave  his  indulgence,  in  considera- 
tion of  the  very  difficult  and  arduous  task  which  God,  in  His 
mysterious  providence,  has  allotted  me.  To  endeavor  to  do  by 
these  writings  as  my  husband  himself  would  if  he  were  yet 
with  us  —  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the  text,  and,  in  dealing 
with  what  is  new,  to  bring  to  bear  upon  it  the  same  unswerv- 


36  INTRODUCTORY   RESUME. 

ing  rectitude  of  purpose  in  valuing  and  accepting  every  iota  of 
truth,  whether  it  can  be  explained  or  not,  rejecting  all  that  is 
crude,  and  abhorring  all  that  is  false,  —  this  has  been  my  aim, 
although,  alas !  too  conscious  throughout  of  the  comparative 
feebleness  of  the  powers  brought  to  bear  upon  it.  If,  however, 
the  reader  is  led  to  inquire  for  himself,  1  trust  he  will  find  that 
these  powers,  such  as  they  are,  have  been  used  in  no  light  or 
frivolous  spirit,  but  with  a  deep,  and  somewhat  of  an  adequate, 
sense  of  the  vast  importance  of  the  subject. 

L.  M. 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 


LECTURE    FIRST. 

Junction  of  Geologic  and  Human  History — Scottish  History  of  Modern  Date 
—  The  Two  Periods  previous  to  the  Roman  Invasion;  the  Stone  Age  an;", 
the  Bronze  Age  —  Geological  Deposits  of  these  Pre-historic  Periods — Tin 
Aboriginal  Woods  of  Scotland  —  Scotch  Mosses  consequences  of  the  Roma:. 
Invasion — How  formed  —  Deposits,  Natural  and  Artificial,  found  under  ther. 
— The  Sand  Dunes  of  Scotland  —  Human  Remains  and  Works  of  Art  fount: 
in  them  —  An  Old  Church  Disinterred  in  1835  on  the  Coast  of  Cornwall  — 
Controversy  regarding  it — Ancient  Scotch  Barony  underlying  the  Sand  —  Th 
Old  and  New  Coast  Lines  in  Scotland  — Where  chiefly  to  be  observed  —  Geol 
ogy  the  Science  of  Landscape  —  Scenery  of  the  Old  and  New  Coast  Lines  — 
Date  of  the  Change  of  Level  from  the  Old  to  the  New  Coast  Line  uncertain  — 
Beyond  the  Historic,  but  within  the  Human  Period  —  Evidences  of  the  fact  i:; 
remains  of  Primitive  Weapons  and  Ancient  Boats —  Changes  of  Level  not  rare- 
events  to  the  Geologist —  Some  of  these  enumerated  —  The  Boulder-Clay  — lt.< 
prevalence  in  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland  —  Indicated  in  the  Scenery  of  the 
Country  —  The  Scratchiugs  on  the  Boulders  accounted  for  —  Produced  by  UK- 
grating  of  Icebergs  when  Scotland  was  submerged  — Direction  in  which  Ice- 
bergs floated,  from  West  to  East  —  "  Crag  and  Tail » the  Eflect  of  it  —  Probablj 
Cause  of  the  Westerly  Direction  of  the  Current. 

Ix  most  of  the  countries  of  Western  Europe,  Scotland 
among  the  rest,  geological  history  may  be  regarded  as 
ending  where  human  history  begins.  The  most  ancient 
portions  of  the  one  piece  on  to  the  most  modern  portion:: 
of  the  other.  But  their  line  of  junction  is,  if  I  may  so 
express  myself,  not  an  abrupt,  but  a  shaded  line ;  so  that, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  human  period  passes  so  entirely  into 

the  geological,  that  we  found  our  conclusions  respecting 

4 


38  LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY. 

the  first  human  inhabitants  rather  on  what  they  deemed 
geologic  than  on  the  ordinary  historic  data;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  some  of  the  latter  and  lesser  geologic  changes 
have  takrii  place  in  periods  comparatively  so  recent  that, 
in  even  our  own  country,  we  are  able  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  them  in  the  first  dawn  of  history  proper, —  that  written 
history  in  which  man  records  the  deeds  of  his  fellows. 

In  Scotland  the  ordinary  historic  materials  are  of  no 
very  ancient  date.  Ty tier's  History  opens  with  the  acces- 
sion of  Alexander  III.,  in  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth 
century ;  the  Annals  of  Lord  Hailes  commence  nearly  two 
centuries  earlier,  with  the  accession  of  Malcolm  Canmore ; 
there  still  exist  among  the  muniments  of  Durham  Cathe- 
dral charters  of  the  "gracious  Duncan,"  written  about 
the  year  1035 ;  and  it  is  held  by  Runic  scholars  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  inscription  on  the  Ruthwell  Cross  may  be 
about  two  centuries  earlier  still.  But  from  beyond  this 
comparatively  ^modern  period  in  Scotland  no  written  docu- 
ment has  descended,  or  no  native  inscription  decipherable 
by  the  antiquary.  A  few  votive  tablets  and  altars,  let- 
tered by  the  legionaries  of  Agricola  or  Lollius  Urbicus, 
wlu'n  engaged  in  laying  down  their  long  lines  of  wall,  or 
rearing  their  watch-towers,  represent  a  still  remoter  period ; 
and  a  few  graphic  passages  in  the  classic  pages  of  Tacitus 
throw  a  partial  and  fitful  light  on  the  forms  and  characters 
of  the  warlike  people  against  which  the  ramparts  were 
cast  up,  and  for  a  time  defended.  But  beyond  this  epoch, 
to  at  least  the  historian  of  the  merely  literary  type,  or 
to  the  antiquary  of  the  purely  documentary  one,  all  is 
darkness.  "At  one  stride  comes  the  dark."  The  period 
once  reached  which  we  find  so  happily  described  by 
Coleridge.  "Antecedently  to  all  history,"  says  the  poet, 
"  and  long  glimmering  through  it  as  a  hazy  tradition,  there 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  39 

presents  itself  to  our  imagination  an  indefinite  period, 
dateless  as  eternity,  —  a  state  rather  than  a  time.  For 
even  the  sense  of  succession  is  lost  in  the  uniformity  of 
the  stream." 

It  is,  however,  more  than  probable  that  the  age  of  Agric- 
ola  holds  but  a  midway  place  between  the  present  time 
and  the  time  in  which  Scotland  first  became  a  scene  of 
human  habitation.  Two  great  periods  had  passed  ere  the 
period  of  the  Roman  invasion,  —  that  earliest  period  now 
known  to  the  antiquary  as  tl^e  " stone  age"  in  which  the 
metals  were  unknown,  and  to  which  the  flint  arrow-head 
and  the  greenstone  battle-axe  belong;  and  that  after 
period  known  to  the  antiquary  as  the  "bronze  age"  in 
which  weapons  of  war  and  the  chase  were  formed  of  a 
mixture  of  copper  and  tin.  Bronze  had,  in  the  era  of 
Agricola,  been  supplanted  among  the  old  Caledonians  by 
iron,  as  stone  had  at  an  earlier  era  been  supplanted  by 
bronze ;  and  his  legionaries  were  met  in  fight  by  men 
armed,  much  after  the  manner  of  their  descendants  at 
Sheriffmuir  and  Culloden,  with  broadsword  and  target. 
And  it  is  known  that  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  earlier, 
when  Caesar  first  crossed  the  Channel,  the  Britons  used  a 
money  made  of  iron.  The  two  earlier  periods  of  bronze 
and  stone  had  come  to  a  close  in  the  island  ere  the 
commencement  of  the  Christian  era;  and  our  evidence 
regarding  them  is,  as  I  have  said,  properly  of  a  geologic 
character.  We  read  their  history  in  what  may  be  termed 
the  fossils  of  the  antiquary.  Man  is  peculiarly  a  tool-and- 
weapon-making  animal ;  and  his  tools  and  weapons  repre- 
sent always  the  stage  of  civilization  at  which  he  has 
arrived.  First,  stone  is  the  material  out  of  which  he 
fashions  his  implements.  If  we  except  that  family  of  man 
which  preserved  the  aboriginal  civilization,  there  seems 


10  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

:iever  to  have  been  a  tribe  or  nation  that  had  not  at  one 
;!me  recourse  to  this  most  obvious  of  substances  for  their 
'  ools  and  weapons.  Then  comes  an  age  in  which  stone  is 
•upplanted  by  the  metals  that  occur  in  a  native  state,  — 
;.  e.  in  a  state  of  ductility  in  the  rock,  —  such  as  copper, 
liver,  and  gold.  Of  these,  copper  is  by  much  the  most 
•bundant;  and  in  all  countries  in  which  it  has  been  em- 
•.iloyed  for  tools  and  weapons,  means  have  been  found  by  the 
primitive  workers  to  harden  it  through  an  admixture  of 
other  metals,  such  as  zinc  ajid  tin.  Last  of  all,  the  com- 
paratively occult  art  of  smelting  iron  is  discovered,  and 
•-he  further  art  of  converting  it  into  steel;  and  such  is 
its  superiority  in  this  form  to  every  other  metal  employed 
in  the  fabrication  of  implements,  that  it  supplants  every 
>ther ;  and  the  battle-axe  and  chisel  of  hardened  copper 
'  bronze)  are  as  certainly  superseded  by  it  as  the  chisel  and 
lie  battle-axe  of  stone  had  at  an  earlier  period  been  super- 
seded by  the  bronze.1  Now,  it  is  truly  wonderful  how 
thoroughly,  for  all  general  purposes,  this  scheme  of  classi- 
icatiou,  which  we  owe  to  the  Danish  antiquary  Thomson, 
oranges  into  corresponding  sections  and  groups  the  an- 

1  In  an  interesting  article  on  Ireland  which  lately  appeared  in  the 
•'  Scotsman  "  newspaper,  I  find  it  stated  that  for  a  very  considerable  dis- 
:ince,  "  between  Lough  Rea  and  Lough  Derg,  the  river  Shannon  was  ford- 
^ble  at  only  one  point,  which  of  course  formed  the  only  medium  of  eom- 
nunication  between  the  natives  of  the  two  banks.  They  seem,  however," 
t  is  added,  "to  have  met  oftener  for  war  than  peace;  and  from  this  ford 
i  whole  series  of  ancient  warlike  weapons  was  dug  out.  These  weapons 
;re  now  preserved  in  the  fine  collection  of  antiquities  in  the  Museum  of 
lie  Royal  Irish  Academy  in  Dublin,  and  are  partly  bronze  and  partly 
tone.  Their  position  in  the  river  bed  told  a  curious  tale,  both  historically 
ml  geologically.  The  weapons  of  bronze  were  all  found  in  the  upper 
tratum,  and  below  them  those  of  stone;  showing,  as  antiquaries  well 
-now,  that  an  age  of  bronze  followed  not  an  age  of  gold,  but  an  age  of 
?tonc." 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  41 

tiquities  of  a  country,  and  gives  to  it  a  legible  history  in 
ages  unrecorded  by  the  chronicler.  With  the  stone  tools 
or  weapons  there  are  found  associated  in  our  own  country, 
for  instance,  a  certain  style  of  sepulture,  a  certain  type  of 
cranium,  a  certain  form  of  human  dwellings,  a  certain  class 
of  personal  ornaments,  certain  rude  log-hollowed  canoes, 
undressed  standing  stones,  and  curiously-poised  cromlechs. 
The  bronze  tool  or  weapon  has  also  its  associated  class  of 
antiquities,  —  massive  ornaments  of  gold,  boats  built  of 
plank,  and,  as  a  modern  shipwright  would  express  himself, 
copper-fastened,  cinerary  urns, — for  it  would  seem  that, 
while  in  an  earlier,  as  in  a  later  age,  our  country-folk 
buried  their  dead,  in  this  middle  period  they  committed 
their  bodies  to  the  flames ;  and,  withal,  evidences,  in  the 
occasional  productions  of  other  countries,  that  commerce 
had  begun  to  break  up  the  death-like  stagnation  which 
characterized  the  earlier  period,  and  to  send  through  the 
nations  its  circulating  tides,  feeble  of  pulse  and  slow,  but 
instinct,  notwithstanding,  with  the  first  life  of  civilization. 
And  thus  we  reason  on  the  same  kind  of  unwritten  data 
regarding  the  human  inhabitants  of  our  country  who  li~v  ed 
during  these  two  early  stages,  as  that  on  which  we  reason 
regarding  their  contemporaries  the  extirpated  animals,  or 
their  predecessors  the  extinct  ones.  The  interest  which 
attaches  to  human  history  thus  conducted  on  what  may 
be  termed  the  geologic  plan  is  singularly  great.  No  nation 
during  its  stone  period  possesses  a  literature  ;  nor  did  any 
nation,  of  at  least  Western  Europe,  possess  a  literature 
during  its  bronze  period.  Of  course,  without  letters  there 
can  be  no  history ;  and  even  if  a  detailed  history  of  such 
uncivilized  nations  did  exist,  what  would  be  its  value? 
"  Milton  did  not  scruple  to  declare,"  says  Hume,  "  that  the 

skirmishes  of  kites  or  crows  as  much  merited  a  particular 

4* 


42  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

narrative  as  the  confused  transactions  and  battles  of  the 
Saxon  Heptarchy."  But  the  subject  rises  at  once  in  dig-, 
nity  and  importance  when,  contemplating  an  ancient  people 
through  their  remains,  simply  as  men,  we  trace,  step  by 
step,  the  influence  and  character  of  their  beliefs,  their 
progress  in  the  arts,  the  effects  of  invasion  and  conquest 
on  both  their  minds  and  bodies,  and,  in  short,  the  broad 
and  general  in  their  history,  as  opposed  to  the  minute  and 
the  particular.  The  story  of  a  civilized  people  I  would 
fain  study  in  the  pages  of  their  best  and  most  philosophic 
historians;  whereas  I  would  prefer  acquainting  myself 
with  that  of  a  savage  one  archaeologically  and  in  its  re- 
mains. And  I  would  appeal,  in  justification  of  the  prefer- 
ence, to  the  great  superiority  in  interest  and  value  of  the 
recently  published  "  Pre-historic  Annals  of  Scotland,"  by 
our  accomplished  townsman,  Mr.  Daniel  Wilson,  over  all 
the  diffuse  narrative  and  tedious  description  of  all  the  old 
chroniclers  that  ever  wore  out  life  in  cloister  or  cell. 

What  may  be  properly  regarded  as  the  geological  de- 
posits or  formations  of  the  two  pre-historic  periods  in 
Scotland,  —  the  period  of  stone  and  the  period  of  bronze, 
—  are  morasses,  sand  dunes,  old  river  estuaries,  and  that 
marginal  strip  of  flat  land  which  intervenes  between  the 
ancient  and  the  existing  coast  lines.  The  remains  of  man 
also  occur,  widely  scattered  all  over  the  country,  in  a  su- 
perficial layer,  composed  in  some  localities  of  the  drift- 
travels,  and  in  others  of  the  boulder-clay;  but  to  this 
stratum  they  do  not  geologically  belong:  they  lie  at  a 
grave's  depth,  and  have  their  place  in  it  through  the  prev- 
alence of  that  almost  instinctive  feeling  which  led  the 
patriarch  of  old  to  bury  his  dead  out  of  his  sight.  Most 
of  the  mistakes,  however,  which  would  antedate  the  exist- 
of  our  species  upon  the  earth,  and  make  man  con- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  43 

temporary  with  the  older  extinct  mammals,  have  resulted 
from  this  ancient  practice  of  inhumation,  or  from  accidents 
which  have  arisen  out  of  it. 

All  our  Scotch  morasses  seem  to  be  of  comparatively 
modern  origin.  There  are  mosses  in  England,  or  at  least 
buried  forests,  as  on  the  Norfolk  coast,  at  Cromer  and 
Happisburgh,  that  are  more  ancient  than  the  drift-clays 
and  gravels ;  whereas,  so  far  as  is  yet  known,  there  are 
none  of  our  Scotch  mosses  that  do  not  overlie  the  drift 
formations ;  and  not  a  few  of  their  number  seem  to  have 
been  formed  within  even  the  historic  ages.  They  are  the 
memorials  of  a  period,  spread  over  many  centuries,  which 
began  after  Scotland  had  arisen  out  of  the  glacial  ocean, 
and  presented,  under  a  softening  climate,  nearly  the  exist- 
ing area,  but  bore,  in  its  continuous  covering  of  forest,  the 
indubitable  signs  of  a  virgin  country.  It  is  remarked  by 
Humboldt,  that  all  the  earlier  seats  of  civilization  are  bare 
and  treeless.  "When,  in  passing  from  our  thickly  foliated 
forests  of  oak,  we  cross,"  he  says,  "  the  Alps  or  the  Pyr- 
enees, and  enter  Italy  or  Spain,  or  when  the  traveller  first 
directs  his  eye  to  some  of  the  African  coasts  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, he  may  be  easily  led  to  adopt  the  erroneous 
inference  that  absence  of  trees  is  a  characteristic  of  the 
warmer  climates.  But  he  forgets,"  it  is  added,  "that 
Southern  Europe  wore  a  different  aspect  when  it  was  first 
colonized  by  Pelasgian  or  Carthaginian  settlers.  He  for- 
•gets,  too,  that  an  earlier  civilization  of  the  human  race 
sets  bounds  to  the  increase  of  forests ;  and  that  nations,  in 
their  change-loving  spirit,  gradually  destroy  the  decora- 
tions which  rejoice  our  eye  in  the  north,  and  which,  more 
than  the  records  of  history,  attest  the  youthfulness  of  our 
civilization"  Borne  of  my  audience  must  be  old  enough 
to  remember  the  last  of  the  great  aboriginal  woods  of 


44  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

Scotland.  It  was  only  during  the  second  war  of  the  first 
French  Revolution,  when  the  northern  ports  of  Europe 
were  shut  against  Great  Britain,  that  the  native  pine- 
woods  of  Rothiemurchus  and  the  upper  reaches  of  the 
Spey  were  cut  down;  and  as  late  as  the  year  1820,  I 
looked,  in  the  upper  recesses  of  Strathcarron,  on  the  last 
scattered  remains  of  one  of  the  most  celebrated  of  the  old 
pine-forests  of  Ross-shire.  Possibly  some  of  the  frag- 
ments of  the  pine-forests  which  skirted  the  western  shores 
of  Loch  Maree  may  still  exist ;  though,  when  I  last  passed 
through  it,  many  years  ago,  the  axe  was  busy  among  its 
glades.  It  is  known  of  some  of  our  Scotch  mosses,  —  the 
deposits  which  testify  geologically  to  this  primitive  state 
of  things  when  the  country  was  forest-covered,  —  that 
they  date  from  the  times  of  the  Roman  invasion,  and  were 
consequences  of  it.  The  mark  of  the  Roman  axe  —  a 
narrow,  chisel-like  tool  —  has  been  detected,  in  many  in- 
stances, on  the  lower  tier  of  stumps  over  which  the  peat 
has  accumulated  ;  and  in  some  cases  the  sorely  rusted  axe 
itself  has  been  found  sticking  in  the  buried  tree.  Among 

^  O  O 

the  tangled  debris  of  a  prostrated  forest  the  woodman  fre- 
quently mislays  his  tools,  —  a  mishap  to  which  the  old 
Romans  seem  to  have  been  as  subject  as  the  men  of  a  later 
time ;  and  so  the  list  of  Roman  utensils,  coins,  and  arms, 
found  in  the  mosses  of  the  south  and  midland  parts  of 
Scotland,  is  in  consequence  a  long  one.  "  In  Pousil  Moss, 
near  Glasgow,"  says  Rennie,  in  his  "Essay  on  Peat  Moss,"- 
"  a  leathern  bag  containing  about  two  hundred  silver  coins 
of  Rome  was  found ;  in  Dundaff  Moor  a  number  of  simi- 
lar coins  were  found;  in  Annan  Moss,  near  the  Roman 
Causeway,  a  Roman  ornament  of  pure  gold  was  found ;  a 
<-:mi].-kottle  was  found  eight  feet  deep  under  a 
on  the  estate  of  (>rliu.-rt yn •;  in  Flanders  Moss  a 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  45 

similar  utensil  was  found;  a  Roman  jug  was  found  in 
Locher  Moss,  Dumfriesshire;  a  pot  and  decanter  of  Ro- 
man copper  was  found  in  a  moss  in  Kirkmichael  parish,  in 
the  same  county ;  and  two  vessels  of  Roman  bronze  in  the 
Moss  of  Glenderhill,  in  Strathaven."  And  thus  the  list 
runs  on.  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive  how,  in  the  circum- 
stances, mosses  come  to  be  formed.  The  Roman  soldiers 
cut  down,  in  their  march,  wide  avenues  in  the  forests 
through  which  they  passed.  The  felled  wood  was  left  to 
rot  on  the  surface ;  small  streams  were  choked  up  in  the 
levels ;  pools  formed  in  the  hollows ;  the  soil  beneath,  shut 
up  from  the  light  and  the  air,  became  unfitted  to  produce 
its  former  vegetation ;  but  a  new  order  of  plants,  the  thick 
water-mosses,  began  to  spring  up ;  one  generation  budded 
and  decayed  over  the  ruins  of  another;  and  what  had 
been  an  overturned  forest  became  in  the  course  of  years  a 
deep  morass,  —  an  unsightly  but  permanent  monument  of 
the  formidable  invader. 

Some  of  our  other  Scotch  mosses  seem  to  have  owed 
their  origin  to  violent  hurricanes;  —  their  under  tier  of 
trunks,  either  turned  up  by  the  roots  or  broken  across,  lie 
all  one  way.  What  may  be  termed  their  native  fossils  are 
exceedingly  curious.  I  have  seen  personal  ornaments  of 
the  stone  period,  chiefly  beads  of  large  size,  made  out  of 
a  pink-colored  carbonate  of  lime,  which  had  been  found  in 
the  bed  of  gravel  on  which  one  of  our  Galwegian  mosses 
rested,  and  which  intimated  that  the  "  stone  period  "  had 
commenced  in  the  island  ere  this  moss  had  begun  to  form. 
We  find  the  same  fact  borne  out  by  the  Black  Moss  on 
the  banks  of  the  Etive,  Argyleshire,  where,  under  an  accu- 
mulation of  eight  feet  of  peat,  there  occur  irregularly  oval 
pavements  of  stone,  overlaid  often  by  a  layer  of  wood- 
ashes,  and  surrounded  by  portions  of  hazel  stakes,  —  the 


16  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

remains,  apparently,  of  such  primitive  huts  as  those  in 
which,  according  to  Gihbon,  the  ancient  Germans  resided, 
ami  which  were,  we  are  told,  "of  a  circular  figure,  built 
of  rough  timber,  thatched  with  straw,  and  pierced  at  the 
top,  to  leave  a  free,  passage  for  the  smoke."  Similar  re- 
mains, but  apparently  of  a  still  more  ancient  type,  have 
been  laid  open  in  Aberdeenshire ;  and  I  find  Mr.  Wilson 
stating,  in  his  archaeological  history,  that  on  several  occa- 
sions, rude  canoes,  which  had  been  hollowed  out  of  single 
logs  of  wood  by  the  agency  of  fire,  and  evidently  of  the 
"  stone  age,"  have  been  found  in  Lochar  Moss,  Dumfries- 
shire, with  ornamental  tores  and  brass  bowls,  not  less  evi- 
dently of  the  subsequent  "  bronze  period."  It  is  stated  by 
Dr.  Boates,  in  his  "  Natural  History,"  that  in  Ireland,  the 
furrows  of  what  had  been  once  ploughed  fields  have  been 
found  underlying  bogs,  —  in  one  instance  at  least  (in  Don- 
egal), with  the  remains  of  an  ancientj)lough,  and  the  wat- 
tles of  a  hedge  six  feet  beneath  the  surface.  In  1833  there 
discovered  in  Drumkilen  bog,  near  the  north-east 
coast  of  the  county  of  Donegal,  an  ancient  house  formed 
of  oak  beams.  Though  only  nine  feet  high,  it  consisted 
of  two  stories,  each  about  four  feet  in  height.  One  side 
of  the  building  was  entirely  open,  and  a  stone  chisel  was 
found  on  the  floor,  —  indicating  that  this  ancient  domicile 
belonged  to  the  stone  period.  Associated,  too,  with  the 
works  of  man  of  the  earlier  periods,  we  find  in  our  mosses 
equally  suggestive  remains  of  the  extirpated,  and  in  some 

-  of  the  extinct  animals,  such  as  gigantic  skulls  and 
horns  of  the  Jios  Primigenius  or  native  ox,  and  of  the  Oer- 
vua  Megaceros  or  Irish  elk,  with  the  skeletons  of  wolves, 
of  beavers,  of  wild  horses,  and  of  bears.  Then-  c.\  i  -t  s  what 

:is  to  be  sufficient  evidence  that  the  two  extinct  ani- 
mals named  the  Irish  elk  and  native  ox  were  contemporary 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  47 

with  the  primitive  hunters  of  the  stone  period :  the  cervi- 
cal vertebrae  of  a  native  ox  have  been  found  deeply  scarred 
by  a  stone  javelin,  and  the  rib  of  an  Irish  elk  perforated 
by  a  stone  arrow-head ;  and  it  is  known  that  some  of  the 
extirpated  animals,  such  as  the  wild  horse,  wolf,  and  bea- 
ver, continued  to  live  among  our  forests  down  till  a  com- 
paratively recent  period.1  We  find  it  stated  by  Hector 
Boece,  in  his  "  History,"  that  there  were  beavers  living 
among  our  Highland  glens  even  in  his  days,  as  late  as  the 
year  1520;  but  there  rests  a  shadow  of  doubt  on  the  state- 
ment. It  is  unquestionable,  however,  that  the  Gaelic 
name  of  the  creature,  Lasleathin,  or  broad-tail,  still  sur- 
vives; and  equally  certain  that  when  Baldwin,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  journeyed  into  Wales  towards  the 
close  of  the  twelfth  century,  to  incite  the  Welsh  to  join 
in  the  Crusades,  the  beaver  was  engaged  in  building  its 
coffer  domes  and  log-houses  in  the  river  Teivy,  Cardigan- 
shire. The  wolf  and  wild  horse  maintained  their  place  in 
at  least  the  northern  part  of  the  island  for  several  centu- 
ries later.  When  in  1618  Taylor,  the  water  poet,  visited 
Scotland,  he  accompanied  the  "  good  lord  of  Mar  "  on  one 
of  his  great  hunting  expeditions  among  the  Grampians; 
and  we  find,  from  the  amusing  narrative  of  his  journey, 
that  for  the  space  of  twelve  days  he  saw  neither  house  nor 
corn-field,  but  "deer,  wild  horses,  wolves,  and  such  like 
creatures."  The  wolf  did  not  finally  disappear  from  among 
our  mountains  until  the  year  1680,  when  the  last  of  the 
race  was  killed  in  Lochaber  by  that  formidable  Ewan 
Cameron  of  Lochiel  with  whom  Cromwell  was  content  to 
make  peace  after  conquering  all  the  rest  of  Scotland. 

1  Many  interesting  human  remains  have  latdy  been  disinterred  from 
the  Severn  drift  and  gravels  near  Tcwkesbury,  such  as  cinerary  urns  with 
bones  and  ashes,  and  utensils  for  carrying  water,  associated  with  antlers 
of  the  red  deer.  —  W.  S.  S. 


48  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

The  sand  dunes  of  the  country  —  accumulations  of  sand 
hrajied  over  the  soil  by  the  winds,  and  in  some  cases,  as  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Stromness  in  Orkney,  and  near  New 
Quay  on  the  coast  of  Cornwall,  consolidated  into  a  kind  of 
open-grained  sandstone  —  contain,  like  the  mosses  of  the 
country,  ancient  human  remains  and  works  of  art.  There 
have  been  detected  among  the  older  sand  dunes  of  Moray, 
broken  or  partially  finished  arrow-heads  of  flint,  with  splin- 
tered masses  of  the  material  out  of  which  they  had  been 
fashioned,  —  the  debris,  apparently,  of  the  workshop  of 
some  weapon-maker  of  the  stone  period.  Among  a  tract 
of  sand  dunes  on  the  shores  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  imme- 
diately under  the  Northern  Sutor,  in  a  hillock  of  blown 
sand,  which  was  laid  open  about  eighty  years  ago  by  the 
winds  of  a  stormy  winter,  there  was  found  a  pile  of  the 
bones  of  the  various  animals  of  the  chase,  and  the  horns 
of  deer,  mixed  with  the  shells  of  molluscs  of  the  edible 
species;  and,  judging  from  the  remains  of  an  ancient  hill- 
fort  in  the  neighborhood,  and  from  the  circumstance  that 
under  an  adjacent  dune  rude  sepulchral  urns  were  dis- 
interred many  years  after,  I  have  concluded  that  the  hunt- 
ers by  whom  they  had  been  accumulated  could  not  have 
flourished  later  than  at  least  the  age  of  bronze.  It  was 
ascertained  in  one  of  the  Orkneys,  about  the  year  1819, 
that  a  range  of  similar  dunes,  partially  cleared  by  a  long 
tract  of  high  winds  from  the  west,  had  overlain  for  untold 
ages  what  seemed  to  be  the  remains  of  an  ancient  Scan- 
dinavian village.  In  fine,  very  strange  fossils  of  the  human 
period  has  this  sand  deposit  of  subaerial  formation  been 
found  to  contain.  There  were  disinterred  on  the  Cornish 
coast  in  1835,  out  of  an  immense  wreath  of  sand,  an  old 
British  church  and  oratory,  —  the  church  and  oratory  of 
Perr:m-s;il)iil;e, — whirl)  had  been  hidden  from  the  eye  of 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  49 

man  for  nearly  a  thousand  years.  The  Tractarian  contro- 
versy had  just  begun  at  the  time  to  agitate  the  Episcopacy 
of  England ;  it  had  become  of  importance  to  ascertain  the 
exact  form  of  building  sanctioned  by  antiquity  as  most 
conducive  to  devotion ;  and  a  fossil  church,  which  had  un- 
dergone no  change  almost  since  the  times  of  the  ancient 
Christianity,  was  too  interesting  a  relic  to  escape  the  notice 
of  the  parties  which  the  controversy  divided.  But  though 
antagonistic  volumes  were  written  regarding  it,  in  a  style 
not  quite  like  that  in  which  Professor  Owen  and  Dr.  Man- 
tell  have  since  discussed  the  restoration  of  the  Belemnite, 
it  was  ultimately  found  that  the  little  old  church  of  St. 
Pimm  the  Culdee  —  such  a  building  as  Robinson  Crusoe 
might  have  erected  for  the  ecclesiastical  uses  of  himself 
and  his  man  Friday  —  threw  exceedingly  little  light  on 
the  vexed  question  of  church  architecture.  The  altar  is  in 
the  east,  said  the  Tractarians.  Nay,  the  building  itself  does 
not  lie  east  and  west,  replied  their  opponents.  We  grant 
you  it  does  not,  rejoined  the  Tractarians ;  but  its  gable 
fronts  the  point  where  the  sun  rises  on  the  saint's  birthday. 
Who  knows  that?  exclaimed  their  opponents :  besides,  the 
sacred  gable  was  unfurnished  with  a  window.  We  deny 
that,  said  the  Tractarians;  the  laborer  who  saw  it  just  ere 
it  fell  says  there  was  a  large  hole  in  it.  And  thus  the  con- 
troversy ran  on,  undoubtedly  amusing,  and,  I  daresay,  very 
instructive.  The  north  of  Scotland  has  its  ancient  fossil 
barony  underlying  a  wilderness  of  sand ;  ploughed  fields 
and  fences,  with  the  walls  of  turf-cottages,  and  the  remains 
of  a  manor-house,  all  irrecoverably  submerged;  —  and  we 
find  the  fact  recorded  in  a  Scotch  act  of  the  times  of  Wil- 
liam III.  Curious,  as  being  perhaps  the  only  act  of  Par- 
liament in  existence  to  which  the  geologist  could  refer  for 
the  history. of  a  deposit,  I  must  take  the  liberty  of  submit- 


50  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

ting  to  you  a  small  portion  of  one  of  its  long  sentences. 
"  Our  Sovereign  Lord,"  says  the  preamble,  "  considering 
that  many  lands,  meadows,  and  pasturages,  lying  on  the 
sea-coa.sts,  have  l>eeii  ruined  and  overspread  in  many  parts 
of  thi  kingdom  by  sand  driven  from  sand-hills,  the  which 
has  been  mainly  occasioned  by  the  pulling  up  of  the  roots 
of  bent,  juniper,  and  broom  bushes,  which  did  loose  and 
break  the  surface  and  scroof  of  the  sand-hills ;  and  partic- 
ularly, considering  that  the  barony  of  Cawbin,  and  house 
and  yeards  thereof,  lying  within  the  sheriffdom  of  Elgin,  is 
quite  ruined  and  overspread  with  sand,  the  which  was  oc- 
ca*sioned  by  the  foresaid  bad  practice  of  pulling  the  bent 
and  juniper,  —  does  hereby  strictly  prohibit,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 
I  have  wandered  for  hours  amid  the  sand-wastes  of  this 
ruined  barony,  and  seen  only  a  few  stunted  bushes  of 
broom,  and  a  few  scattered  tufts  of  withered  bent,  occupy- 
ing, amid  utter  barrenness,  the  place  of  what,  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  had  been  the  richest  fields  of 
the  rich  province  of  Moray;  and,  where  the  winds  had 
hollowed  out  the  sand,  I  have  detected,  uncovered  for  a 
few  yards'-breadth,  portions  of  the  buried  furrows,  sorely 
dried  into  the  consistence  of  sun-burned  brick,  but  largely 
charged  with  the  seeds  of  the  common  corn-field  weeds  of 
the  country,  that,  as  ascertained  by  experiment  by  the  late 
Sir  Thomas  Dick  Lauder,  still  retain  their  vitality.  It  is 
said  that  an  antique  dove-cot  in  front  of  the  huge  sand- 
wreath  which  enveloped  the  manor-house,  continued  to 
present  the  top  of  its  peaked  roof  over  the  sand,  as  a  foun- 
dered vessel  sometimes  exhibits  its  vane  over  the  waves, 
until  the  year  1760.  The  traditions  of  the  district  testify 
that,  for  many  years  after  the  orchard  had  been  enveloped, 
the  topmost  branches  of  the  fruit-trees,  barely  seen  over 
the  surface,  continued  cadi  spring  languidly  to  throw  out 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  51 

bud  and  blossom  ;  and  it  is  a  curious  circumstance,  that  in 
the  neighboring  churchyard  of  Dike  there  is  a  sepulchral 
monument  of  the  Culbin  family,  which,  though  it  does  not 
date  beyond  the  reign  of  James  VI.,  was  erected  by  a 
lord  and  lady  of  the  last  barony,  at  a  time  when  they 
seem  to  have  had  no  suspicion  of  the  utte*r  ruin  which  was 
coming  on  their  house.  The  quaint  inscription  runs  as 
follows : 

VALER  :  KIJfNAIRD  :  ELIZABETH  :  IXXIS  :  1613  : 

THE  :  BVILDAES  :  OF  :  THIS  :  BED  :  OP  :  STAKE  : 

AE  :  LAIRD  :  AND  :  LADIE  :  OP  :  COVBIXE  : 

QVHILK  :  TV  A  :  AND  :  THAK8  :  QVHANE  :  BRAITHE  IS  :  GAXE  : 

PLEIS  :  GOD  :  VIL  :  8LEIP  :  THIS  :  BED  :  VITHIN  : 

I  refer  to  these  facts,  though  they  belong  certainly  to  no 
very  remote  age  in  the  past  history  of  our  country,  chiefly 
to  show  that  in  what  may  be  termed  the  geological  forma- 
tions of  the  human  period  very  curious  fossils  may  be 
already  deposited,  awaiting  the  researches, of  the  future. 
As  we  now  find,  in  raising  blocks  of  stone  from  the  quarry, 
water-rippled  surfaces  lying  beneath,  fretted  by  the  tracks 
of  ancient  birds  and  reptiles,  there  is  a  time  coming  when, 
under  thick  beds  of  stone,  there  may  be  detected  fields  and 
orchards,  cottages,  ihanor-houses,  and  churches, —  the  me- 
morials of  nations  that  have  perished,  and  of  a  condition 
of  things  and  a  stage  of  society  that  have  forever  passed 
away. 

Sand  dunes  and  morasses  are  phenomena  of  a  strictly  local 
character.  The  last  great  geological  change,  general  in  its 
extent  and  effects,  of  which  Scotland  was  the  subject,  was 
a  change  in  its  level,  in  relation  to  that  of  the  ocean,  of 
from  fifteen  to  thirty  feet.  At  some  unascertained  period, 
regarded  as  recent  by  the  geologist,  —  for  man  seems  to 
have  been  an  actor  on  the  scene  at  the  time,  —  but  remote 


52  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

by  the  historian,  —  for  its  date  is  anterior  to  that  of  his 
oldest  authorities  in  this  country,  —  the  land  rose,  appar- 
ently during  several  interrupted  paroxysms  of  upheaval,  so 
that  there  was  a  fringe  of  comparatively  level  sea-bottom 
laid  dry,  and  added  to  the  country's  area,  considerably 
broader  than  that  which  we  now  see  exposed  by  the  ebb  of 
every  stream  tide.  And  what  I  must  deem  indubitable 
marks  of  this  change  of  level  can  be  traced  all  around  Scot- 
land and  its  islands.  The  country,  save  in  a  few  interrupted 
tracts  of  precipitous  coast,  where  the  depth  of  the  water, 
like  that  beside  a  steep  mole  whose  base  never  dries  at  ebb, 
precluded  any  accession  to  the  land,  presents  around  its 
margin  a  double  coast  line,  —  the  line  at  present  washed 
by  the  waves,  and  a  line  now  covered  with  grass,  or  waving 
with  shrubs,  or  skirted  by  walls  of  precipice  perforated  with 
caves,  against  which  the  surf  broke  for  the  last  time  more 
than  two  thousand  years  ago.  These  raised  beaches  form 
a  peculiar  feature  in  our  Scottish  scenery,  which  you  must 
have  often  remarked.  In  passing  along  the  public  road  be- 
tween Portobello  and  Leith,  the  traveller  sees  upon  the 
left  hand  a  continuous  grassy  bank,  with  a  line  of  willows 
atop,  which  he  may  mark  in  some  places  advancing  in  low 
promontories,  in  others  receding  into  shallow  bays,  and 
which  is  separated  from  the  present  coast  line,  which  in 
general  flatness  it  greatly  resembles,  by  a  strip  of  rich 
meadow  land,  varying  from  one  to  three  hundred  yards  in 
breadth.  The  continuous  grassy  bank  is  the  old  coast  line ; 
and  the  gently  sloping  margin  of  green  meadow  is  the  strip 
of  flat  sea-beach  along  which  the  tides  used  to  rise  and  fall 
twice  every  twenty-four  hours,  ere  the  retreat  of  the  sea 
within  its  present  bounds.  Should  it  be  low  ebb  at  the 
tiim-,  one  may  pass  from  the  ancient  to  the  recent  sea- 
l'f:it-h;  the  one  waving  with  grass,  the  other  brown  with 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY.  53 

alga? ;  the  one  consisting,  under  its  covering  of  vegetable 
mould,  of  stratified  gravels  and  sand,  blent  with  the  de- 
cayed shells  of  mollusca  that  died  more  than  twenty  cen- 
turies since  ;  the  other  formed  of  exactly  the  same  sort  of 
lines  of  stratified  sand  and  gravel,  and  strewed  over  by 
shells  that  were  thrown  ashore  by  the  last  tide,  and  that 
lived  only  a  few  weeks  ago.  And,  rising  over  the  lower, 
as  over  the  upper  flat,  we  see  a  continuous  escarpment, 
which  marks  where,  in  the  present  age,  during  the  height 
of  stream  tides,  the  sea  and  the  land  meet ;  just  as  the  up- 
per willow-crested  escarpment  indicates  where  they  met  of 
old.  The  two  escarpments  and  the  two  gently  sloping 
planes  at  their  base  are  repetitions  of  the  same  phenomena, 
save  that  the  upper  escarpment  and  upper  plane  are  some- 
what softer  in  their  outline  than  the  lower,  —  an  effect  of 
the  wear  of  the  elements,  and  of  the  accumulation  of  the 
vegetable  mould.  There  is  as  thorough  an  identity  between 
them  as  between  two  contiguous  steps  of  a  stair,  covered, 
the  one  by  a  patch  of  brown,  and  the  other  by  a  patch  of 
green,  in  the  pattern  of  the  stair-carpet.  There  are  other 
parts  of  our  Scottish  shores  in  which  the  old  coast  line  is 
of  a  much  bolder  character  than  anywhere  in  this* neigh- 
borhood, and  the  plane  at  its  base  of  greater  breadth.  On 
the  Forfarshire  coast,  the  Dundee  and  Arbroath  Railway 
runs  along  the  level  margin,  once  a  sea-bottom,  which  at 
one  point,  opposite  the  parish  church  of  Barrie,  is  at  length 
two  miles  in  breadth,  and  the  old  coast  line  rises  from  thirty 
to  fifty  feet  over  it.  It  is  strongly  marked  on  the  southern 
side  of  the  Dornoch  Frith,  immediately  below  and  for  sev- 
eral miles  to  the  east  of  the  town  of  Tain,  where  it  attains 
a  breadth  of  from  one  to  two  miles,  and  where  the  old  sea- 
margin,  rising  over  the  cottage-mottled  plain  below  in  a 
series  of  jutting  headlands,  with  green  bosky  bays  between, 

5* 


54  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

• 
strikes  even  the  least  practised  eye  as  possessed  of  all  the 

characteristic  peculiarities  of  a  true  coast  line.  It  is  scarce 
less  marked  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cromarty,  and  on  the 
opposite  shore  of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  in  the  parish  of  Nigg. 
It  runs  along  by  much  the  greater  portion  of  the  eastern 
coast  of  Sutherland  ;  and  forms  at  the  head  of  Loch  Fleet, 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Dornoch,  a  long  withdrawing  frith, 
bounded  by  picturesque  shores,  and  covered  by  a  short, 
green  sward,  level  as  the  sea  in  a  calm,  on  which  groups 
tit'  willow  and  alder  trees  take  the  place  of  busy  fleets,  and 
the  hare  and  the  partridge  that  of  the  coot  and  the  por- 
poise. Along  the  upper  recesses  of  almost  all  our  flatter 
friths,  such  as  the  friths  of  Beauly,  of  Dingwall,  and  of  the 
Tay,  and  of  the  Clyde,  it  exists  as  fertile  tracts  of  carse- 
land  ;  the  rich  links  of  the  Forth,  rendered  classical  by  the 
muse  of  Macneil,  belong  to  it ;  it  furnishes,  in  various  other 
localities  more  exposed  to  the  open  sea,  ranges  of  sandy 
links  of  a  less  valuable  character,  such  as  the  range  in  our 
own  neighborhood  occupied  by  the  race-course  of  Inveresk; 
and  not  a  few  of  the  seaports  and  watering  places  of  the 
country,  such  as  the  greater  part  of  Leitli,  Portobello, 
.Mii>.selburgh,  Kirkaldy,  Dundee,  Dingwall,  Invergordon, 
Cromarty,  Wick,  Thurso,  Kirkwall,  Oban,  and  Greenock, 
have  been  built  upon  it. 

The  old  coast  line,  with  the  flat  marginal  selvage  at  its 
base,  form,  as  I  have  said,  well-marked  features  in  the 
scenery  of  the  island.  Geology  may  be  properly  regarded 
us  the  wience  of  landscape:  it  is  to  the  landscape  painte' 
what  anatomy  is  to  the  historic  one  or  to  the  sculptor.  T 
the  singularly  rich  and  variously  compounded  prospects 
of  our  country  there  is  scarce  a  single  trait  that  cannot 
be  resolved  into  some  geological  peculiarity  in  the  coun- 
t'r.ui:.  u..ik,  or  which  does  not  bear  witness  otherwise 


LECTURES    OX   GEOLOGY.  55 

and  more  directly  than  from  any  mere  suggestion  of  the 
associative  faculty,  to  some  striking  event  in  its  physical 
history.  Its  landscapes  are  tablets  roughened,  like  the 
tablets  of  Nineveh,  with  the  records  of  the  past ;  and  their 
various  features,  whether  of  hill  or  valley,  terrace  or  escarp- 
ment, form  the  bold  and  graceful  characters  in  which  the 
narrative  is  inscribed.  As  our  Scottish  geologists  have 
given  less  attention  to  this  special  department  of  their 
science  than  to  perhaps  any  other,  —  less,  I  am  disposed  to 
think,  than,  from  its  intrinsic  interest  and  its  bearing  on 
art,  is  fairly  owing  to  it,  —  I  shall  take  the  liberty  —  cast- 
ing myself  on  the  forbearance  of  such  of  my  audience  as 
are  least  artistic  in  their  tastes  —  of  occasionally  touching 
upon  it  in  my  course. 

I  need  scarce  refer  to  the  scenery  of  our  mosses, —  these 
sombre,  lake-like  tracts,  divested,  however,  of  the  cheerful 
gleam  of  the  water,- — that  so  often  fatigue  the  eye  of  the 
traveller  among  our  mountains,  but  which  at  that  season 
when  the  white  cottony  carnach  mottles  their  dark  sur- 
faces, reminding  one  of  tears  on  a  hatchment,  —  when  the 
hills  around,  purple  with  the  richly- blossoming  heath,  are 
chequered  with  the  light  and  shade  of  a  cloud-dappled 
sky, — and  when,  in-'the  rough  foreground,  the  gray  upright 
stone  of  other  days  waves  its  beard  of  long  gray  lichen  to 
the  breeze,  —  are  not  unworthy,  in  their  impressive  loneli- 
ness, of  employing,  as  they  have  oftener  than  once  done, 
the  magic  pencil  of  a  Macculloch.  I  need  as  little  refer  to 
the  scenery  of  those  sand  dunes  which  gleam  so  brightly 
amid  some  of  our  northern  landscapes,  and  which,  not 
only  in  color,  but  also  in  form,  contrast  so  strongly  with 
our  morasses.  The  dark  flat  morass  is  suggestive  always 
of  sluggish  and  stagnant  repose  ;  whereas,  among  our  sand 
dunes,  from  the  minuter  ripple-markings  of  the  general 


56  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

surface  to  the  wave-like  form  of  the  hills  sloped  in  the 
direction  of  the  prevailing  winds,  and  curved,  like  snow- 
wreaths,  to  the  opposite  point  of  the  compass,  almost  every 
outline  is  equally  suggestive  of  motion.  I  could,  however, 
fain  borrow  the  pencil  of  our  countryman  Hill,  as  he  em- 
ploys it  in  his  exquisite  cabinet-pictures,  to  portray  the 
story  of  the  last  Barony:  rolling  hills  of  sand  all  around, 
the  red  light  of  a  stormy  summer  evening  deepening  into 
dun  and  lurid  brown,  through  an  eddying  column  of  suf- 
focating dust  snatched  up  by  a  whirlwind ;  the  antique 
garden-dial  dimly  shadowing  forth  the  hour  of  sunset  for 
the  last  time,  nmid  half-submerged  shrubs  and  trees ;  and, 
full  in  the  centre  of  the  picture,  a  forlorn  fortalice  of  the 
olden  time,  with  the  encroaching  wreath  rising  to  its  lower 
battlements,  like  some  wrecked  vessel  on  a.  wild  lee-shore, 
with  the  angry  surf  raging  high  over  her  deck,  and  kissing 
with  its  flame-like  tips  the  distant  yards. 

The  scenery  of  the  old  coast  line  possesses  well-nigh  all 
the  variety  of  that  of  the  existing  coast ;  but  it  substitutes 
field  and  meadow  for  the  blue  sea,  and  woods  and  human 
dwellings  for  busy  mast-crowded  harbors,'  and  fleets  riding 
at  anchor.  It  is  pleasing,  however,  to  see  headland  jutting 
out  beyond  headland  into  some  rich  plain,  traversed  by 
trim  hedge-rows  and  green  lanes ;  or  some  picturesque 
cottage,  overshadowed  by  its  gnarled  elm,  rising  in  some 
bosky  hollow  at  the  foot  of  the  swelling  bank  or  weather- 
stained  precipice,  beneath  which  the  restless  surf  once 
broke  against  the  beach.  There  are  well-marked  speci- 
mens of  this  scenery  of  the  ancient  coast  line  in  our  imme- 
diate neighborhood.  Musselburgh,  with  its  homely  Saxon 
name,  lies  in  the  middle  of  what  was  once  a  flat  sandy  bay, 
no\v  l:iid  out  into  fields,  gardens,  and  a  race-course;  :m«l 
ll:r  old  coast  escarpment,  luxuriant  with  hanging  woods, 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  57 

and  gay  with  villas,  and  which  may  possibly  have  been  its 
first  Celtic  designation,  Inveresk,  ere  the  last  upheaval  of 
the  land,  half  closes  around  it.  The  church  and  burying- 
ground  occupy  the  top  of  a  long  ridge,  that  had  once  been 
a  river-bar,  heaped  up  apparently  by  the  action  of  the 
waves  on  the  one  side,  and  by  that  of  the  stream  on  the 
other.  But,  as  shown  by  the  remains  of  Roman  baths  and 
a  Roman  rampart,  which  once  occupied  its  summit,  it  must 
have  borne  its  present  character  from  at  least  the  times  of 
Lollius  Urbicus,  —  perhaps  for  several  centuries  earlier. 
The  neighboring  port  of  Portobello,  as  seen  from  the  east, 
just  as  it  comes  full  in  sight  on  the  Musselburgh  road, 
seems  set  so  completely  in  a  framework  of  the  ancient 
escarpment,  that  it  derives  from  it  its  natural  features. 
But  it  is  where,  along  our  boulder  shores,  lines  of  steep 
precipices  have  been  elevated  over  the  sea,  so  that  the 
waves  no  longer  reach  their  bases,  that  the  old  coast  sce- 
nery is  at  once  most  striking  and  peculiar.  Tall  picturesque 
stacks,  which  had  once  stood  up  amid  the  surf,  brown  and 
shaggy  with  the  serrated  fucus  and  the  broad-fronded  lam- 
inara,  now  rise  out  of  thickets  of  fern  or  sloethorn,  and 
wave  green  with  glassy  ivy  and  the  pendant  honeysuckle. 
Deep  caverns,  too,  in  which  the  billows  had  toiled  for  ages, 
but  now  silent,  save  when  the  drop  tinkles  from  above  into 
some  cool  cistern  half  hidden  in  the  gloom  of  the  interior, 
open  along  the  wall  of  cliffs ;  and  over  projecting  buttresses 
of  rock,  perforated  often  at  their  bases  as  if  by  Gothic 
archways,  and  thickly  mantled  over  by  liverworts,  green 
and  gray,  the  birch  hangs  tremulous  from  above,  or  the 
hazel  shoots  out  its  boughs  of  brighter  green,  or  the  moun- 
tain-ash hangs  its  scarlet  berries.  One  of  the  most  pleasing 
landscapes  of  one  of  the  most  accomplished  of  female 
artists  —  Miss  Stoddart  —  has  as  its  subject  an  ancient 


58  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

escarpment  of  this  bold  character,  which  occurs  in  Arran. 
A  mossy,  fern-tufted  meadow,  skirted  by  the  sea,  roughened 
by  what  had  once  been  half-tide  skerries,  and  enlivened 
by  a  Highland  cottage,  stretches  out  into  the  foreground 
from  an  irregular  wall  of  rock,  overhung  by  graceful  foli- 
age, hollowed  into  deep  recesses,  adown  which  the  waters 
tinkle,  and  with  some  of  its  bolder  projections  perforated 
at  the  base  like  flying  buttresses  of  the  decorated  Gothic ; 
and  such  is  the  truth  of  the  representation,  that  we  at 
once  determine  that  the  artist  had  chosen  as  her  subject 
one  of  the  more  precipitous  reaches  of  the  old  coast  line, 
and  that  its  wall  of  rock  must  have  derived  much  of  the 
peculiarity  of  trait  so  happily  caught,  from  the  action  of 
the  waves.  Again,  in  direct  contrast  with  this  striking 
type  of  old  coast  escarpment,  though  in  its  own  way 
not  less  striking,  Mr.  Hill's  fine  picture,  "  The  Sands  at 
Sunrise,"  lately  engraved  by  the  Art  Union,  exhibits  as  its 
background  one  of  those  long,  flat,  sandy  spits,  products 
of  the  last  upheaval,  which,  stretching  far  into  the  sea, 
bear  amid  the  light  of  day  an  air  of  even  deeper  loneliness 
than  our  woods  and  fields  when  embrowned  by  the  gather- 
ing night.  When  the  insulated  stacks  of  an  old  coast  line 
are  at  once  tall  and  attenuated,  and  of  a  white  or  pale- 
colored  rock,  the  effect,  especially  when  viewed  by  moon- 
light, is  singularly  striking.  The  valley  of  the  Seine,  as 
described  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  —  now  a  valley,  but  once 
a  broad  frith,  —  is  flanked  on  each  side,  in  its  lower  reaches, 
by  tall  stacks  of  white  chalk,  of  apparently  the  same  age 
as  those  of  the  ancient  coast  line  of  our  own  country ; 
and,  seen  ranged  along  their  green  hill-sides,  in  the  imper- 
fect light  of  evening,  or  by  the  rising  moon,  they  seem  the 
sheeted  spectres  of  some  extinct  tribe  of  giants. 

The  date  of  that  change  of  level  which  gave  to  Scot- 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  59 

land  this  flat  fringe  of  margin-land,  with  its  picturesque  es- 
carpment of  ancient  coast,  we  cannot  positively  fix.  We 
find  reason  to  conclude  that  it  took  place  previous  to  the  age 
of  the  Roman  invasion.  It  has  been  shown,  from  evidence 
of  a  semi-geologic,  semi-archasologic  character,  by  one  of 
our  highest  authorities  on  the  subject,  Mr.  Smith  of  Jor- 
danhill,  that  the  land  must  have  stood  at  a  not  lower  level 
than  now,  when  the  Roman  wall  which  connects  the  friths 
of  Forth  and  Clyde  was  completed.  For,  had  it  been 
otherwise,  some  of  the  terminal  works  which  remain  would 
have  been,  what  they  obviously  were  not,  under  the  sea 
line  at  the  time.  In  the  sister  kingdom,  too,  which  has 
also  its  old  coast  line,  St.  Michael's  Mount  in  Cornwall, 
which  was  connected  with  the  mainland  at  low  water  by 
a  strip  of  beach  in  the  times  of  Julius  Caesar,  —  a  fact 
recorded  by  Diodorus  Siculus,  —  is  similarly  connected 
with  the  mainland  at  low  water  still.  But  though  the 
upheaval  of  the  old  coast  line  is  removed  thus  beyond  the 
historic  period,  it  seems  to  have  fallen,  as  I  have  said, 
within  the  human  one :  man  seems  to  have  been  an  inhab- 
itant of  the  island  when  its  general  level  was  from  twenty 
to  forty  feet  lower  than  now,  and  the  waves  broke  at  full 
tide  against  the  old -coast  line.  "The  skeleton  of  a  Bala3- 
noptera,"  says  Professor  Owen,  "seventy-two  feet  in  length, 
was  found,"  about  thirty  years  ago,  "  imbedded  in  the  clay 
on  the  banks  of  the  Forth,  more  than  twenty  feet  above 
the  reach  of  the  highest  tide."  And  again,  "  Several  bones 
of  a  whale,"1  he  continues,  "were  also  discovered  at  Dun- 
more  rock,  Stirlingshire,  in  brick-earth,'  nearly  forty  feet 
above  the  present  sea-level."  These  whales  must  have 
been  stranded  when  the  old  coast  line  was  washed  by  the 

1  Eones  of  the  whale  have  been  found  in  the  clay  of  the  Avon  and 
Severn  drifts,  in  a  similar  ]>o  -iiion.  —  W.  S.  S. 


CO  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

waves,  and  the  marginal  strip  existed  as  an  oozy  sea-bot- 
tom ;  and  yet  in  both  cases  there  were  found,  among  the 
bones,  primitive  weapons  made  of  the  pointed  branches 
of  deer's  horns,  hollowed  at  their  broad  ends  by  artificial 
perforations;  and  in  one  of  these  perforations  the  decayed 
fragments  of  a  wooden  shaft  still  remained.  The  pointed 
and  perforated  pieces  of  horn  were  evidently  rude  lance- 
heads,  that  in  all  probability  had  been  employed  against 
the  stranded  cetacea  by  the  savage  natives.  Further,  where 
the  city  of  Glasgow  now  stands,  three  ancient  boats  — 
one  of  which  may  be  seen  in  the  Museum  of  our  Scottish 
Antiquaries  in  Edinburgh,  and  another  in  the  Andersonian 
Museum  —  have  been  dug  up  since  the  year  1781 ;  the  last 
only  four  years  ago.  One  of  the  number  was  found  a  full 
quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  Clyde,  and  about  twenty-six 
feet  above  its  level  at  high  water.  It  reposed,  too,  not  on 
a  laminated  silt,  such  as  the  river  now  deposits,  but  on  a 
pure  sea  sand.  "It  therefore  appears,"  says  Mr.  Robert 
Chambers,  in  his  singularly  ingenious  work  on  "Raised 
Beaches,"  "that  we  have  scarcely  an  alternative  to  the 
supposition  that  when  these  vessels  foundered,  and  were 
deposited  where  in  modern  times  they  have  been  found,  the 
Frith  of  Clyde  was  a  sea  several  miles  wide  at  Glasgow, 
covering  the  site  of  the  lower  districts  of  the  city,  and 
receiving  the  waters  of  the  river  not  lower  than  Both  well 
Bridge."  I  may  add,  that  the  Glasgow  boat  in  the  Anti- 
quarian Museum  is  such  a  rude  canoe,  hollowed  out  of  a 
single  trunk,  as  may  be  seen  in  use  among  such  of  the 
Polynesian  islands  as  lie  most  out  of  the  reach  of  civiliza- 
tion, or  in  the  Indian  Archipelago,  among  the  rude  Alforian 
races;  and  that  in  another  of  these  boats  —  the  first  dis- 
covered—  there  was  found  a  beautifully  polished  hatchet 
of  dark  greenstone,  —  an  unequivocal  indication  that  they 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  61 

belonged  to  the  "stone  period."  There  are  curious  ety- 
mologies traceable  among  the  older  Celtic  names  of  places 
in  the  country,  which  I  have  sometimes  heard  adduced  in 
evidence  that  it  was  inhabited,  ere  the  last  upheaval  of  the 
land,  by  the  ancient  Gaelic-speaking  race.  Eminences  that 
rise  in  the  flat  marginal  strip,  and  which,  though  islands 
once,  could  not  have  been  such  since  the  final  recession  of 
the  sea,  continue  to  bear,  as  in  the  neighborhood  of  Stir- 
ling, the  Gaelic  prefix  for  an  island.  But  as  the  old  Celts 
seem  to  have  been  remarkable  as  a  people  for  their  nice 
perception  of  resemblances,  the  insular  form  of  these  emi- 
nences may  be  perhaps  regarded  as  suggestive  enough  to 
account  for  their  names.  One  of  these  etymologies,  how- 
ever, which  could  scarce  have  been  founded  on  any  mere 
resemblance,  seems  worthy  of  special  notice.  Loch  Ewe, 
in  Ross-shire,  one  of  our  salt  sea  lochs,  receives  the  waters 
of  Loch  Maree,  —  a  noble  fresh-water  lake,  about  eighteen 
miles  in  length,  so  little  raised  above  the  sea-level,  that 
ere  the  last  upheaval  of  the  land  it  must  have  formed 
merely  the  upper  reaches  of  Loch  Ewe.  The  name  Loch 
Maree — Mary's  Loch — is  evidently  mediaeval.  And,  curi- 
ously enough,  about  a  mile  beyond  its  upper  end,  just 
where  Loch  Ewe  would  have  terminated  ere  the  land 
last  arose,  an  ancient  farm  has  borne  from  time  immemo- 
rial the  name  of  Kinlochewe,  —  the  head  of  Loch  Ewe. 
Dispose,  however,  of  the  etymologies  as  we  may,  there  are 
facts  enough  on  record  which  render  it  more  than  probable 
that,  though  the  general  change  of  level  to  which  we  owe 
the  old  coast  line  in  Scotland  does  not  lie  within  the  his- 
toric ages,  it  is  comprised  within  the  human  period.  But 
we  cannot,  as  has  been  shown,  fix  upon  a  date  for  the 
event.  • 

Were  the  case  otherwise,  —  could  we  fix  with  any  cer- 

6 


62  LECTURES   OX    GEOLOGY. 

tainty  the  time  when  this  change  of  level  took  place,  and 
the  platform  of  the  lower  coast  line  was  gained  from  the 
sea,  —  there  might  be  an  approximation  made  to  the  ante- 
rior space  of  time  during  which  the  line  of  high  water  had 
been  the '  willow-crowned  escarpment  beyond  Portobello 
and  the  green  bank  near  Rutherglen,  and  the  sea  rose  far 
beyond  its  present  limits  in  our  friths  and  bays.  There 
are  portions  of  the  coast  that  at  this  early  period  presented* 
to  the  waves  lines  of  precipices  that  are  now  fringed  at 
their  bases  by  strips  of  verdure,  and  removed  far  beyond 
their  reach.  There  are  other  portions  of  coast  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of  these,  where  similar  lines  of 
precipices,  identical  in  their  powers  of  resistance,  were 
brought  by  the  same  movement  within  that  very  influence 
of  the  waves  beyond  which  the  others  had  been  raised. 
And  each  line  bears,  in  the  caves  with  which  it  is  fretted, 
—  caves  hollowed  by  the  attrition  of  the  surf  in  the  direc- 
tion of  faults,  or  where  masses  of  yielding  texture  had 
been  included  in  the  solid  rock,  —  indices  to  mark,  propor- 
tionally at  least,  the  respective  periods  during  which  they 
were  exposed  to  the  excavating  agent.  Thus,  the  aver- 
age depth  of  the  ancient  caves  in  an  exposed  line  of  coast, 
as  ascertained  by  dividing  the  aggregate  sum  of  their 
depths  by  their  number,  and  the  average  depth,  ascertained 
by  the  same  process,  of  the  recent  caves,  equally  exposed 
on  the  same  coast,  and  hollowed  in  the  same  variety  of 
rock,  could  scarce  fail  to  represent  their  respective  periods 
of  exposure,  had  we  but  a  given  number  of  years,  histor- 
ically determined,  to  set  off  against  the  average  measure- 
ment of  the  recent  excavations.  Even  wanting  that,  how- 
ever, it  is  something  to  know,  that  though  the  sea  has 
stood*  at  the  existing  sea-margin  since  the  days  of  Agric- 
<>l:i,  Miid  ;it  least  a  few  centuries  more,  it  stood  for  a  con- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  63 

siderably  longer  period  at  the  old  const  line.  The  rock 
of  which  those  remarkable  promontories,  the  Sutors  of 
Crornarty,  are  composed,  is  a  granite  gneiss,  much  trav- 
ersed by  faults,  and  inclosing  occasional  masses  of  a  soft 
chloride  schist,  that  yields  to  the  waves,  while  the  sur- 
rounding gneiss  —  hard  enough  to  strike  fire  with  steel  — 
remains  little  affected  by  the  attrition  of  centuries.  These 
promontories  have,  in  consequence,  their  numerous  caves 
ranged  in  a  double  row,  —  the  lower  row  that  of  the  exist- 
ing const,  the  upper  that  of  the  old  one ;  and  I  have 
examined  both  rows  with  some  little  degree  of  care.  The 
deepest  of  the  recent  caves  measures,  from  the  opening  to 
its  inner  extremity,  where  the  rock  closes,  exactly  a  hun- 
dred feet ;  the  deepest  of  the  ancient  ones,  now  so  com- 
pletely raised  above  the  surf,  that  in  the  highest  tides,  and 
urged  upwards  by  the  severest  storms,  the  waves  never 
reach  its  mouth,  measures  exactly  a  hundred  and  fifty  feet. 
And  these  depths,  though  much  beyond  the  respective 
average  depths  of  their  several  rows,  bear,  so  far  as  I  could 
ascertain  the  point,  the  proportions  to  each  other  that 
these  averages  bear.  The  caves  of  the  existing  coast  line 
are  as  two  in  depth,  and  those  of  the  old  coast  line  as  three. 
If  the  excavation  of  the  recent  caves  be  the  work  of  two 
thousand  years,  the  excavation  of  the  ancient  caves  must 
have  been  the  work  of  three  thousand ;  or,  as  two  thou- 
sand does  not  bring  us  much  beyond  the  Roman  period, 
let  us  assume  as  the  period  of  the  existing  coast  line  and 
its  caves,  two  thousand  two  hundred  years,  and  as  the 
proportional  period  of  the  old  coast  line,  three  thousand 
three  hundred  more.  Both  sums  united  bring  us  back 
five  thousand  five  hundred  years.  How  much  more  an- 
cient either  coast  line  may  be,  we  of  course  cannot  deter- 
mine :  we  only  know  that,  on  the  lowest  possible  assump- 


64  LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY. 

tion,  we  reach  a  period  represented  by  their  united  ages 
only  less  extended  by  six  years  than  that  which  the  Sa- 
maritan chronology  assumes  as  the  period  during  which 
man  has  existed  upon  earth,  and  only  three  hundred  and 
fifty-five  years  less  than  that  assumed  by  the  Masoretic 
chronology.  The  chronology  of  the  Septuagint,  which 
many  have  begun  to  deem  the  most  adequate  of  the  three, 
adds  about  five  hundred  and  eighty-six  years  to  the  sum 
of  the  latter. 

Permit  me,  in  closing  this  part  of  my  subject,  to  show 
you  that  changes  of  level  such  as  that  to  which  we  owe 
our  old  coast  line  in  Scotland,  and  the  marginal  strip  of 
dry  land  which  we  have  laid  out  into  so  many  pleasant 
gardens  and  fields,  and  on  which  we  have  built  so  many 
of  our  seaport  towns,  are  by  no  means  very  rare  events 
to  the  geologist.  He  enumerates  at  least  five  localities  in 
the  Old  World,  —  Scandinavia,  part  of  the  west  coast  of 
Italy,  the  coasts  of  Cutch  and  of  Arracan,  and  part  of  the 
kingdom  of  Luzan,  in  which  the  level  is  slowly  changing 
at  the  present  time ;  and  in  the  New  World  there  are  vast 
districts  in  which  the  land  suddenly  changed  its  level  for 
a  higher  one  during  the  present  century.  "On  the  19th 
of  November  1822,"  says  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  "  the  coast  of 
Chili  was  visited  by  a  most  disastrous  earthquake.  When 
the  district  around  Valparaiso  was  examjned  on  the  morn- 
ing after  the  shock,  it  was  found  that  the  whole  line  of 
coast  for  the  distance  of  above  one  hundred  miles  was 
raised  above  its  former  level.  At  Valparaiso  the  elevation 
was  three  feet,  and  at  Quinteno  about  four  feet.  Part  of* 

the  bed  of  the  sea  remained  bare  and  drv  at  high  water, 

* 

with  beds  of  oyster,  mussel,  and  other  shells,  adhering  to 
the  rocks  on  which  they  grew,  —  the  fish  being  all  dead, 
and  exhaling  offensive  effluvia."  Again,  on  the  east  side 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  65 

of  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  upon  the  coast  of  Arracan,  which  is 
at  present  in  the  course  of  rising,  there  are  islands  which 
present  on  their  shores  exactly  such  an  appearance  as  our 
own  country  would  have  presented  some  sixty  or  a  hun- 
dred years  after  the  elevation  of  the  old  coast  line.  The 
island  of  Reguain,  one  of  these,  was  carefully  surveyed  in 
the  year  1841  by  the  officers  of  her  Majesty's  brig  Chil- 
ders :  and  it  has  been  carefully  mapped  in  the  admirable 
Physical  Atlas  of  the  Messrs.  Johnston  of  Edinburgh. 
We  find  it,  as  shown  in  the  map,  resembling  three  islands ; 
the  one  placed  within  the  other,  as,  to  employ  a  homely 
illustration,  the  druggist,  to  save  room,  places  his  empty 
pill-boxes  the  one  within  the  other.  First,  in  the  centre, 
there  is  the  ancient  island,  with  a  well-defined  coast  line, 
some  six  or  eight  feet  high,  running  all  around  it.  At  the 
base  of  this  line  there  is  a  level  sea  of  rich  paddy  fields,  — 
for  what  may  be  termed  the  second  island  has  been  all 
brought  into  cultivation;  and  it  has  also  its  coast  line, 
which  descends  some  six  or  eight  feet  more,  to  the  level 
of  a  third  island,  which  was  elevated  over  the  'sea  not 
more  than  eighty  years  ago,  and  which  is  still  unculti- 
vated ;  and  the  third  island  is  surrounded  by  the  existing 
coast  line.  Thus  the  centre  island  of  Reguain  consists  of 
three  great  steps  or  platforms,  each  of  which  marks  a  par- 
oxysm of  elevation ;  and,  with  the  upheaval  of  the  coast 
of  Chili,  and  a  numerous  class  of  events  of  a  similar  char- 
acter, it  enables  us  to  conceive  of  the  last  great  geological 
change  of  which  our  country  was  the  subject.  We  imag- 
ine a  forest-covered  land,  marked  by  the  bold,  command- 
ing features  by  which  we  recognize  our  country,  but  in- 
habited by  barbarous,  half-naked  tribes,  that  dwell  in  rude 
circular  wigwams,  formed  of  the  branches  of  trees,  —  that 
employ  in  war  or  the  chase  weapons  of  flint  or  jasper, 

6* 


G6  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

—  and  that  navigate  their  rivers  or  estuaries  in  canoes 
hollowed  by  fire  out  of  single  logs  of  wood.  There  has 
been  an  earthquake  during  the  night;  and  when  morning 
rises,  the  beach  shows  its  broad,  darkened  strip  of  apparent 
ebb,  though  the  tide  is  at  full  at  the  time ;  and  when 
the  waters  retire,  they  leave  vast  uncovered  tracts  never 
seen  before,  comparatively  barren  in  sea-weed,  but  rich  in 
stony  nulliparite  encrustations,  minute  coralines,  and  fleshy 
sponges.  Ages  elapse,  and  civilization  grows.  The  added 
belt  of  level  land  is  occupied  to  its  utmost  extent  by  man : 
lie  lays  it  out  into  gardens  and  fields,  and  builds  himself  a 
dwelling  upon  it :  but  no  sooner  has  he  rendered  it  of 
some  value,  than  the  sea  commences  with  him  a  course 
of  tedious  litigation  for  the  recovery  of  its  property ;  and 
bit  by  bit  has  it  been  wresting  it  out  of  his  hands.  Almost 
all  those  tracts  on  our  coasts  which  have  been  suffering 
during  the  last  few  centuries  from  the  encroachment  of 
the  waves,  and  which  have  to  be  protected  against  their 
fury  wherever  land  is  valuable,  as  in  this  neighborhood,  by 
lines  of  bulwarks,  belong  to  the  flat  marginal  strip  won 
from  them  by  the  last  change  of  level. 

Our  next  great  incident  in  the  geologic  history  of  Scot- 
laud  dates,  it  would  seem,  beyond  the  human  period.  In 
passing  along  the  beach  between  Musselburgh  and  Porto- 
bello,  or  again  between  Portobello  and  Leith,  or  yet  again 
between  Leith  and  Newhaven,  one  sees  an  exceedingly 
stiff,  dark-colored  clay,  charged  with  rounded  pebbles  and 
boulders,  and  which,  where  washed  by  the  waves,  presents 
a  frontage  nearly  as  steep  as  that  of  the  rock  itself.  The 
deposit  by  which  it  is  represented  is  known  technically  to 
the  agriculturist  as  Till,  and  to  the  geologist  as  the  Boul- 
der-Clay. Though  not  continuous,  it  is  of  very  general 
occurrence,  in  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland,  and  presents, 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY.  67 

though  it  varies  in  color  and  composition,  according  to  the 
nature  of  the  rocks  which  it  overlies,  certain  unique  ap- 
pearances, which  seem  to  connect  its  origin  in  the  several 
localities  with  one  set  of  causes,  and  which  no  other 
deposit  presents.  Like  the  raised  beaches,  it  has  contrib- 
uted its  distinctive  quota  to  the  variously  featured  scenery 
of  our  country.  The  Scottish  word  scaur,  in  the  restricted 
significancy  attached  to  it  in  many  parts  of  the  kingdom, 
means  simply  a  precipice  of  clay;  and  it  is  almost  invari- 
ably the  boulder-clay  that  forms  scaurs  in  Scotland;  for 
it  is  one  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  deposit,  that  it  stands 
up  well-nigh  as  steeply  over  the  sides  of  rivers,  or  on 
encroaching  sea-beaches,  or  on  abrupt  hill-sides,  as  rock 
itself;  and  these  clay  precipices  bear  almost  invariably  a 
peculiar  set  of  characters  of  their  own.  In  some  cases 
they  spring  up  as  square  and  mural,  seen  in  front,  as  cliffs 
of  the  chalk,  but  seen  in  profile,  we  find  their  outlines 
described  by  parabolic  curves.  In  other  cases  we  see  the 
vegetable  mould  rendered  coherent  by  the  roots  of  shrubs 
and  grasses  projecting  over  them  atop,  like  the  cornice  of 
some  edifice  over  its  frieze.  In  yet  other  cases,  though 
abrupt  as  precipices  of  solid  rock,  we  find  them  seamed  by 
the  weather  into  numerous  divergent  channels,  with  py- 
ramidal peaks  between ;  and,  thus  combining  the  perpen- 
dicularity of  true  cliffs  with  the  rain-scooped  furrows  of  a 
yielding  soil,  they  present  eccentricities  of  aspect  which 
strike,  by  their  grotesqueness,  eyes  little  accustomed  to 
detect  the  picturesque  in  landscape.  Such  are  some  of 
the  features  of  the  scaurs  of  our  country,  —  a  well-marked 
class  of  precipices  for  which  the  English  language  has  no 
name.  It  is,  however,  in  continuous  grass-covered  escarp- 
ments, which  in  some  parts  form  the  old  coast  line,  and 
rise  in  others  along  the  sides  of  rivers,  that  we  detect  at 


68  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

once  the  most  marked  and  most  graceful  scenic  peculiarity 
of  the  boulder-clay.  The  steep  slopes,  furrowed  by  enor- 
mous flutings,  like  those  of  the  antique  Doric,  appear  as 
if  laid  out  into  such  burial-mounds  as  those  with  which  a 
m  frets  the  surface  of  a  country  churchyard,  but  with 
tliis  difference,  that  they  seem  the  burial-mounds  of  giants 
tall  and  bulky  as  those  that  of  old  warred  against  the 
gods.  On  a  grass-covered  escarpment  of  the  boulder-clay 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Cromarty  these  mounds  are  strik- 
ing enough  to  have  caught  the  eye  of  the  children  of  the 
place,  and  are  known  among  them  as  the  giants'  graves. 
They  lie  against  the  green  bank,  each  from  forty  to  sixty 
yards  in  length,  and  from  six  to  ten  yards  in  height,  with 
their  feet  to  the  shore,  and  their  heads  on  the  top  of  the 
escarpment ;  and  when  the  evening  sun  falls  low,  and  the 
shadows  lengthen,  they  form,  from  their  alternate  bars  of 
light  and  shade,  that  remind  one  of  the  ebon  and  ivory 
buttress  of  the  poet,  a  singularly  pleasing  feature  in  the 
landscape.  I  have  sometimes  wished  I  could  fix  their  fea- 
luivs  in  a  calotypc,  for  the  benefit  of  my  friends  the  land- 
scape painters.  This  vignette,  I  would  fain  say,  represents 
the  boulder-clay  after  its  precipitous  banks  —  worn  down, 
by  the  frosts  and  rains  of  centuries,  into  parallel  runnels, 
that  gradually  widened  into  these  hollow  grooves — had 
sunk  into  the  angle  of  inclination  at  which  the  disintegrat- 
ing agents  ceased  to  operate,  and  the  green  sward  covered 
all  up.  You  must  be  studying  these  peculiarities  of  aspect 
more  than  ever  you  studied  them  before.  •  There  is  a  time 
coming  when  the  connoisseur  will  as  rigidly  demand  the 
specific  character  of  the  various  geologic  deposits  in  your 
rocks  and  scaurs,  as-  he  now  demands  specific  character  in 
your  shrubs  and  trees. 

I  have  said  that  the  boulder-clay  exhibits  certain  unique 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  69 

appearances,  which  connect  its  origin  in  the  several  locali- 
ties with  one  set  of  causes,  and  which  no  other  deposit 
presents.  On  examining  the  boulders  which  it  encloses, 
we  find  them  strongly  scarred  and  scratched.  In  most 
instances,  too,  the  rock  on  which  the  clay  rests,  —  if  it  be 
a  trap,  or  a  limestone,  or  a  finely-grained  sandstone,  or,  in 
short,  any  rock  on  which  a  tool  could  act,  and  of  a  texture 
fitted  to  retain  the  mark  of  the  tool,  —  we  find  similarly 
scarred,  grooved,  and  scratched.  In  this  part  of  the 
country,  the  boulder-clay  contains  scarce  any  fossils,  save 
fragments  of  the  older  organisms  derived  from  the  rocks 
beneath ;  but  in  both  the  north  and  south  of  Scotland  — 
in  Caithness,  for  instance,  and  in  "Wigtonshire  —  it  con- 
tains numerous  shells,  which,  both  in  their  species  and 
their  state  of  keeping,  throw  light  on  the  origin  of  the 
formation.  But  of  that  more  anon.  Let  me  first  remark, 
that  the  materials  of  the  level  marginal  strip  of  ancient 
sea-beach  beneath  the  old  coast  line  seem,  like  the  mate- 
rials of  the  existing  sea-beach,  to  have  been  arranged 
wholly  by  the  agency  of  water.  But  in  the  boulder-clay 
we  find  a  class  of  appearances  which  mere  water  could 
not  have  produced.  Not  only  are  the  larger  pebbles  and 
boulders  of  the  deposit  scratched  and  grooved,  but  also  its 
smaller  stones,  of  from  a  few  pounds  to  but  a  few  ounces, 
or  even  less  than  an  ounce,  in  weight ;  and  this,  too,  in  a 
peculiar  style  and  direction.  When  the  stones  are  de- 
cidedly of  an  oblong  or  spindle  shape,  the  scratchings 
occur,  in  at  least  four  cases  out  of  every  five,  in  the  line 
of  their  longer  axis.  Now,  the  agent  which  produced  such 
effects  could  not  have  been  simply  water,  whether  im- 
pelled by  currents  or  in  waves.  The  blacksmith,  let  him 
use  what  strength  of  arm  he  may,  cannot  bring  his  file  to 
bear  upon  a  minute  pin  until  he  has  first  locked  it  fast  in 


70  LECTURES  ON   GEOLOGY. 

his  vice ;  and  then,  though  not  before,  his  tool  bears  upon 
it,  and  scratches  it  as  deeply  as  if  it  were  a  beam  of  iron 
of  a  ton  weight.  The  smaller  stones  must  have  been 
fastened  before  they  could  have  been  scratched.  Even, 
however,  if  the  force  of  water  could  have  scratched  and 
furrowed  them,  it  would  not  have  scratched  and  furrowed 
them  longitudinally,  but  across.  Stones,  when  carried 
adown  a  stream  by  the  torrent,  or  propelled  upwards  along 
a  beach  by  the  waves,  present  always  their  broader  and 
longer  surfaces ;  and  the  broader  and  longer  these  surfaces 
arc,  the  further  are  the  stones  propelled.  They  are  not 
launched  forwards,  as  a  sailor  would  say,  end  on,  but  tum- 
bled forwards  broadside.  They  come  rolling  down  a  river 
in  flood,  or  upwards  on  the  shore  in  a  time  of  tempest,  as 
a  hogshead  rolls  down  a  declivity.  In  the  boulder-clay, 
on  the  contrary,  most  of  the  pebbles  that  bear  the  mark 
of  their  transport  at  all  Avere  not  rolled,  but  slidden  for- 
ward in  the  line  of  their  longer  axis.  They  were  launch' ••!, 
as  ships  are  launched,  in  the  line  of  least  resistance,  or  as 
an  arrow  or  javelin  is  sent  on  its  course  through  the  air. 
.Water  could  not  have  been  the  agent  here,  nor  yet  an 
eruption  of  mud,  propelled  along  the  surface  by  some 
wave  of  translation,  produced  by  the  sudden  upheaval  of 
the  bottom  of  the  sea,  or  by  some  great  wave  raised  by  an 
earthquake. 

But  if  water  or  an  eruption  of  mud  could  not  have  pro- 
duced such  effects  as  the  longitudinal  scratching,  let  us  ask 
what  could  have  produced  them  ?  There  are  various  pro- 
cesses going  on  around  us,  by  which  the  scratchings  on  the 
solid  rocks  beneath  are  occasionally  simulated  with  a  less 
or  greater  degree  of  exactness.  In  some  of  our  shallow 
1 1  ighland  fields,  for  instance,  I  have  seen  the  rock  beneath, 
or  the  stones  buried  at  the  depth  of  but  a  few  inches  from 


LECTURES    OX   GEOLOGY.  71 

the  surface,  scarred  by  the  plough  with  ruts  not  very 
unlike  the  larger  ones  on  the  stones  and  rocks  of  the 
boulder-clay;  but  in  these  plough-scarred  surfaces  the 
polish  is  wanting.  Again,  in  some  of  our  steeper  lanes,  if 
a  fine-grained  trap  has  been  used  in  the  pavement,  we  find 
that  it  soon  polishes  and  wears  down  under  the  iron-armed 
feet  of  the  passengers,  and  becomes  scratched  in  the  line 
of  their  tread,  in  a  style  not  very  distinguishable,  save 
for  the  absence  of  the  deeper  furrows,  from  that  of  the 
scratched  and  polished  rock-pavements  of  the  boulder, 
clay.  But  I  know  of  only  one  process  by  which,  on  a 
small  scale,  all  the  phenomena  of  the  boulder-clay  could 
be  produced,  mere  especially,  however,  the  phenomena  of 
its  oblong  pebbles  scratched  in  the  lines  of  their  longer 
axis ;  and  my  recollection  of  that  one  dates  a  good  mdtiy 
years  back.  When,  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago, 
the  herring  fishery  began  to  be  prosecuted  with  vigor  in 
the  north  of  Scotland,  many  of  the  Highland  woods  of 
natural  birch  and  alder  were  cut  down  for  the  manufacture 
of  barrels,  and  floated  in  rafts  along  the  rivers  to  the  sea. 
And  my  opportunities  of  observing  these  rafts,  as  they 
shot  along  the  more  rapid  reaches  of  our  mountain  streams, 
or  swept  over  their  'shallower  ledges,  grazing  the  bottom 
as  they  passed,  naturally  led  me  to  inquire  into  their  oper- 
ations upon  the  beds  of  the  streams  adown  which  they 
were  floated.  Let  us  advert  to  some  of  these.  When  a 
large  raft  of  wood,  floated  down  a  rapid  river,  grates 
heavily  over  some  shallow  bank  of  gravel  and  pebbles 
resting  on  the  rock  beneath,  it  communicates  motion,  not 
of  the  rolling,  but  of  the  lurching  character,  to  the  flatter 
stones  with  which  it  comes  in  contact.  It  slides  ponder- 
ously over  them;  and  they,  with  a  speed  diminished  in 
ratio  from  that  of  the  moving  power  in  proportion  to  the 


72  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

degree  of  friction  below  or  around,  slide  over  the  stones 
or  rock  immediately,  beneath.  And  thus,  to  borrow  my 
terminology  from  our  Scotch  law  courts,  they  are  con 
verted  at  once  into  scratchers  and  scratchees.  They  are 
scratched  by  the  grating,  sand-armed  raft,  which  of  course 
moves  quicker  than  they  move ;  and  they  scratch,  in  turn, 
the  solid  mass  or  embedded  fragment  along  which  they 
are  launched.  Further,  if  the  gravelly  shoals  of  the 
stream  have,  as  is  not  uncommon  in  the  shallows  of  our 
Highland  rivers,  their  thickly-set  patches  of  pearl  mussels, 
many  of  these  could  scarce  miss  being  crushed  and  broken  ; 
and  we  would  find  not  a  few  of  their  fragments,  if  much 
subjected  to  the  friction  of  the  rafting  process,  rounded  at 
their  edges,  and  mayhap  scratched  and  polished  like  the 
stones.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  conceive  of  a  yet  further 
consequence  of  the  process.  A  vast  number  of  rafts 
dropping  down  some  river,  from  day  to  day  and  year 
to  year,  and  always  grating  along  the  same  ledges  of  sand- 
stone, trap,  or  shale,  would  at  length  very  considerably 
wear  them  down ;  and  the  materials  of  the  waste,  more  or 
less  argillaceous,  according  to  the  quality  of  the  rock, 
would  be  deposited  by  the  current  in  the  pools  and  gentler 
reaches  of  the  stream  below.  Even  the  continual  tread 
of  human  feet  in  a  crowded  thoroughfare  soon  wears  down 
the  trap  or  sandstone  pavement,  and  converts  the  solid 
stone  into  impalpable  mud.  Further,  the  color  of  the 
mud  or  clay  would  correspond,  as  in  the  thoroaghfare  or 
public  road,  with  the  color  of  the  rocks  or  stones  which 
had  been  grooved  down  to  form  it;  and  there  would 
occasionally  mingle  in  the  mass  thus  originated,  rounded 
fragments  of  shells  and  pebbles,  scratched  in  the  line  of 
their  longer  axis. 

Xo\v,  in  the  boulder-clay  wo  find  all  these  peculiarities 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  73 

remarkably  exemplified.  It  contains,  as  has  been  shown, 
the  oblong  stones  scratched  longitudinally;  we  find  it 
thickly  charged  in  various  parts  of  Scotland,  though  not  in 
our  own  immediate  neighborhood,  with  worn  and  rounded 
fragments  of  broken,  shells ;  and  we  see  it  almost  invaria- 
bly borrowing  its  color  from  the  rocks  on  which  it  rests,  — 
a  consequence,  apparently,  of  its  being  the  dressings  of 
these  rocks.  There  is  a  peculiar  kind  of  clay  which  forms 
on  the  surface  of  a  hearthstone  or  piece  of  pavement, 
under  the  hands  of  a  mason's  laborer  engaged  in  rubbing 
it  sraooth  with  water  and  a  polisher  of  gritty  sandstone. 
This  clay  varies  in  quality  and  color  with  the  character  of 
the  stone  operated  upon.  A  flag  of  Arbroath  pavement 
yields  a  bluish-colored  clay  ;  a  flag  of  the  Old  Red  of  Ross 
or  Forfarshire,  a  reddish  colored  clay;  a  flag  of  Suther- 
landshire  Oolite,  or  of  the  Upper  Old  Red  of  Moray  or  of 
Fife,  a  pale  yellowish  clay.  The  polishing  process  is  a 
process  which  produces  clay  out  of  stones,  as  various  in 
tint  as  the  coloring  of  the  various  stones  which  yield  it ; 
and  in  almost  every  instance  does  the  clay  thus  formed 
resemble  some  known  variety  of  the  boulder-clay.  The 
boulder-clay,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  is,  both  in 
color  and  quality,  just  such  a  clay  as  might  be  produced 
by  this  recipe  of  the  mason's  laborer,  from  the  rocks  on 
which  it  rests.  The  red  sandstone  rocks  of  Moray,  Cro- 
marty,  and  Ross,  are  covered  by  red  boulder-clays;  a 
similar  red  boulder-clay,  overlies  the  red  sandstone  rocks 
of  Forfarshire;  and  I. was  first  apprised,  when  travelling  in 
Banffshire  some  years  ago,  that  I  had  entered  on  the  dis- 
trict of  the  Old  Red,  by  finding  the  boulder-clay  assuming 
the  familiar  brick-red  hue.  Over  the  pale  Oolites  of  Suth- 
erlandshire,  as  at  Brora  and  Golspie,  it  is  of  a  pale  yellow 
tint,  and  of  a  yellowish  red  over  the  pale  Old  Red  Sand- 

7 


74  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

stones  of  the  long,  flat  valley  known  as  the  Howe  of  P^ife. 
Again,  in  the  middle  and  north-western  districts  of  Caith- 
ness, where  the  paving  flagstones  so  well  known  in  com- 
merce give  to  the  prevailing  rocks  of  the  district  a  sombre 
tint  of  gray,  the  boulder-clay  assume^,  as  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Wick  and  Thurso,  the  leaden  color  of  the  beds 
which  it  overlies;  while  over  the  Coal  Measures  of  the 
south  of  Scotland,  as  in  East  and  West  Lothian,  and 
around  Edinburgh,  it  is  of  a  bluish-black  tint,  —  exactly 
the  color  which  might  be  premised,  on  the  polishing  the- 
ory, from  the  large  mixture  of  shale-beds,  coal-seams,  and 
trap-rocks,  which  occurs  amid  the  prevailing  light-hued 
sandstones  of  the  deposits  beneath.  Of  course,  this  con- 
dition of  resemblance  in  average  color  between  the  rocks 
and  the  boulder-clays  of  a  district  is  but  of  general,  not 
invariable  occurrence,  —  the  boulder-clay  is  not  invariably 
the  dressings  of  the  rocks  beneath.  We  may  occasionally 
find  the  trail  of  the  rubbings  of  one  tract  overlying,  in  an 
easterly  direction,  the  deposits  of  a  different  one ;  just  as 
we  would  find  the  rubbings  of  variously-colored  pieces  of 
pavement  laid  down  to  form  a  floor,  and  then  polished, 
square  by  square,  where  they  lay,  encroaching,  the  debris 
of  one  square  on  the  limits  of  another,  in  the  direction  of 
the  outward  stroke  of  the  polisher. 

But  while  we  thus  find  all  the  conditions  of  a  raft- 
formed  deposit  in  or  associated  with  the  boulder-clay,  — 
such  as  grooved  and  furrowed  rocks  beneath,  scratched 
and  polished  stones  lined  longitudinally  inclosed  in  it, 
accompanied,  in  not  a  few  instances,  by  rounded  frag- 
ments of  shells,  and  a  general  conformity  in  its  color  to 
that  of  the  rocks  on  which  it  rests,  —  where  in  nature 
shall  we  find  the  analogues  of  the  producing  rails  thein- 
selvs?  A  native  of  Newfoundland,  who  season  after 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  75 

season  had  seen  the  Arctic  icebergs  grating  heavily  along 
the  coasts  of  the  island,  would  experience  little  difficulty 
in  solving  the  riddle.  For  rafts  of  wood  we  have  but  to 
substitute  rafts  of  ice,  a  submerged  land  covered  by  many 
fathoms  of  water,  for  the  shallows  of  the  river  of  my  illus- 
tration, and  some  powerful  ocean  current,  such  as  the  gulf 
or  arctic  stream,  for  the  river  itself,  and  we  at  once  arrive 
at  a  consistent  theory  of  the  boulder-clay  and  its  origin. 
Nor  must  we  deem  it  a  thing  improbable,  that  a  country 
like  Scotland,  which  lies  between  the  fifty-fifth  and  the 
fifty-ninth  degree  of  north  latitude,  should  be  visited 
every  year  by  icebergs.  Newfoundland  lies  from  five  to 
eight  degrees  to  the  south  of  Scotland,  and  yet  its  north- 
ern shores  are  included  in  that  vast  cake  of  ice  which, 
when  winter  sets  fairly  in,  is  found  to  stretch  continu- 
ously, though  in  a  winding  line,  over  the  surface  of  the 
ocean,  from  Nova  Zembla  in  the  Old  World,  to  Labrador 
in  the  New ;  and  the  drift  ice-floes  in  spring,  borne  south- 
wards on  the  Arctic  current,  brush  every  season  over  its 
southern  shores,  or  ground  by  hundreds  upon  its  great 
bank ;  nor  do  they  finally  disappear  until  they  reach  the 
fortieth,  and,  in  at  least  one  recorded  instance,  the  thirty- 
sixth,  degree  of  north  latitude.  I  need  scarce  remind  you 
that  the  temperatm-e  of  a  country  depends  on  other  causes 
than  its  distance  from  the  equator  or  the  pole.  The  iso- 
thermal line,  or  line  of  mean  temperature,  of  the  capital 
of  Iceland,  Reikiavik,  in  latitude  64,  is  nearly  as  high  as 
that  of  St.  John's,  the  capital  of  Newfoundland,  in  lati- 
tude 47 ;  and  old  York,  in  the  fifty-fourth  degree  of  north 
latitude,  enjoys  as  much  average  warmth  throughout  the 
year  as  New  York,  in  the  forty»first  degree.  Now,  the 
causes  which  give  to  countries  in  the  same  latitudes 
climates  so  strangely  different  are  known  not  to  be  per- 


76  LEG-TURKS   ON    GEOLOGY. 

manent  causes:  temperature  is  found  to  depend  on  the 
disposition  of  land  and  sea,  and  the  position,  not  of  the 
geographical  pole,  which  is  single  and  centrical  in  each 
hemisphere,  but  of  the  pole  of  greatest  cold,  which,  in  at 
least  the  northern  hemisphere,  is  double,  and  not  centri- 
cal, —  Asia  having  one,  and  America  another ;  and  if,  as 
is  generally  held,  there  be  a  correspondence  amounting 
almost  to  identity  between  the  poles  of  greatest  cold  and 
the  magnetic  poles,  then  these  poles  are  not  fixed,  but 
oscillating.  Nor  are  we  left  to  infer  on  merely  general 
grounds  that  the  climate  of  our  country  may  have  been  at 
one  time  greatly  more  severe  than  it  is  now.  There  is 
also  zoological  evidence  that  it  was  greatly  more  severe. 
It  is  a  curious  and  significant  fact,  that  the  group  of  shells 
found  in  the  boulder-clay,  resting  over  the  scratched  and 
grooved  rocks,  and  accompanying  the  scratched  and  pol- 
ished pebbles,  is  essentially  a  boreal  or  semi-arctic  group. 
This  little  shell  from  the  boulder-clay  of  Caithness  —  the 
Trophon  scalariformis  or  Fusus  scalariformis,  which, 
from  its  small  size,  seems  to  have  escaped  the  fate  that 
crushed  its  larger  contemporaries  into  fragments  —  is  not 
now  found  living  on  our  coasts,  though  it  still  exists  in 
considerable  abundance  in  the  seas  of  Greenland ;  and  sev- 
eral of  its  neighbors  in  the  clay,  such  as  Tellina  proxima 
and  Astarte  Borealis,  are  of  the  same  northern  character. 
Nay,  in  cases  in  which  the  shells  of  the  boulder-clay  still 
live  in  our  seas,  we  find  those  of  a  northern  character,  such 
as  the  Cyprina  Islandica,  that,  though  not  rare  on  the 
shores  of  Scotland,  is  vastly  more  abundant  on  those  of 
Iceland,  occurring,  not  in  the  present  British,  but  in  the 
present  Icelandic  proportions.  The  Cyprina  Islandica  is 
one  of  the  most  common  shells  of  the  clay,  and,  as  its 
name  testifies,  one  of  the  most  common  shells  of  Iceland  ; 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  77 

but  it  is  by  no  means  one  of  the  most  common  shells  at 
the  present  time  of  our  Scottish  coasts.  The  shells  of  the 
boulder-clay  correspond  in  the  group,  not  to  the  present 
shells  of  Scotland,  but  to  the  present  shells  of  Iceland  and 
the  Northern  Cape. 

Further,  we  are  not  left  merely  to  infer  that  icebergs 
could  or  might  have  grooved  and  worn  down  the  rocks  of 
the  country :  we  learn  from  Sir  Charles  Lyell  —  unques- 
tionably a  competent  observer — that  he  caught  icebergs 
almost  in  the  very  fact  of  grooving  and  wearing  down 
similar  rocks.  In  his  first  work  of  "  Travels  through  the 
United  States,"  he  describes  a  visit  which  he  paid  to  the 
coast  of  Nova  Scotia,  near  Cape  Blomidon :  "  As  I  was 
strolling  along  the  beach,"  he  says,  "  at  the  base  of  a  line 
of  basaltic  cliffs,  which  rise  over  ledges  of  soft  sandstone, 
I  stopped  short  at  the  sight  of  an  unexpected  phenom- 
enon. The  solitary  inhabitant  of  a  desert  island  could 
scarcely  have  been  more  startled  by  a  human  footprint  in 
the  sand  than  I  was  on  beholding  some  recent  furrows  on 
a  ledge  of  sandstone  under  my  feet,  the  exact  counterpart 
of  those  grooves  of  ancient  date  which  I  have  so  often 

attributed  to  glacial  action On  a  recently  formed 

ledge  I  saw  several  straight  furrows  half  an  inch  broad, 
some  of  them  very  nearly  parallel,  others  slightly  diverg- 
ent ;  and,  after  walking  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  I  found 
another  set  of  similar  furrows,  having  the  same  general 
direction  within  about  five  degrees ;  and  I  made  up  my 
mind  that,  if  these  grooves  could  not  be  referred  to  the 
modern  instrumentality  of  ice,  it  would  throw  no  small 
doubt  on  the  glacial  hypothesis.  When  I  asked  my  guide, 
a  peasant  of  the  neighborhood,  whether  he  had  ever  seen 
much  ice  on  the  spot  where  we  stood,  the  heat  was  so  ex- 
cessive (for  we  were  in  the  latitude  of  the  south  of  Franc?, 

7* 


78  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

45  degrees  north)  that  I  seemed  to  be  putting  a  strange 
question.  He  replied,  that  in  the  preceding  winter  [that 
of  1841J  he  had  seen  the  ice,  in  spite  of  the  tide,  which 
ran  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  extending  in  one  un- 
interrupted mass  from  the  shore  where  we  stood,  to  the 
opposite  coast  of  Parrsborough,  and  that  the  rce- blocks, 
heaped  on  each  other  and  frozen  together,  or  packed  at 
the  foot  of  Cape  Blornidon,  were  often  fifteen  feet  thick, 
and  were  pushed  along,  when  the  tide  rose,  over  the  sand- 
stone ledges.  He  also  stated  that  fragments  of  the  black 
stone  which  fell  from  the  summit  of  the  cliff —  a  pile  of 
which  lay  at  its  base  —  were  often  frozen  into  the  ice,  and 
moved  along  with  it.  And  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  hard- 
ness of  these  gravers,  firmly  fixed  in  masses  of  ice,  which, 
though  only  fifteen  feet  thick,  are  often  of  considerable 
horizontal  extent,  has  furnished  sufficient  pressure  and  me- 
chanical power  to  groove  the  ledges  of  soft  sandstone." 

Thus  far  Sir  Charles.  The  boulder-clay  is  found  in 
Scotland  from  deep  beneath  the  sea-level,  where  it  forms 
the  anchoring  ground  of  some  of  our  finest  harbors,  to  the 
height  of  from  six  to  nine  hundred  feet  along  our  hill- 
sides. The  travelled  boulders  to  which  it  owes  its  name 
have  been  found  as  high  as  .fourteen  hundred  feet.  Up  to 
the  highest  of  these  heights  icebergs  at  one  time  operated 
upon  our  Scottish  rocks.  Scotland,  therefore,  must  in  that 
icy  age  have  been  submerged  to  the  highest  of  these 
heights.  It  must  have  existed  as  three  groups  of  islands, — 
the  Cheviot,  or  southern  group ;  the  Grampian,  or  middle 
group ;  and  the  Ben  Weavis,  or  northern  group. 

Let  me  next  advert  to  a  peculiarity  in  the  direction  of 
the  icebergs  which  went  careering  at  this  period  over  the 
submerged  land.  As  shown  by  the  lines  and  furrows 
which  they  have  graven  upon  the  rocks,  their  general 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY.  79 

course,  with  a  few  occasional  divergences,  —  effects  appa- 
rently, of  the  line  of  the  greater  valleys,  —  was  from  west 
to  east.  It  is  further  a  fact,  exactly  correspondent  in  the 
evidence  which  it  bears,  that  the  trap  eminences  of  the 
country  —  eminences  of  hard  rock  rising  amid  districts  of 
soft  sandstone,  or  still  softer  shale  —  have  generally  at- 
tached to  their  eastern  sides  sloping  tali  of  the  yielding 
strata  out  of  which  they  rise,  and  which  have  been  washed 
away  from  all  their  other  sides.  Every  larger  stone  in  a 
water-course,  after  the  torrent  fed  by  a  thunder-shower 
has  just  subsided,  shows,  on  the  same  principle,  its  trail  of 
sand  and  shingle  piled  up  behind  it  —  sand  and  shingle 
which  kept  it  from  being  swept  awfly ;  and  the  simple  ef- 
fect, when  it  occurs  on  the  large  scale,  is  known  to  the 
geologist  as  the  phenomenon  of  "Crag  and  tail."  The 
rock  upon  which  Edinburgh  Castle  stands,  existing  as  the 
"  crag?  and  the  sloping  ridge  which  extends  from  the  cas- 
tle's outer  moat  to  Holyrood,  existing  as  the  tail,  may  be 
cited  as  a  familiar  instance.  We  find  the  same  phenom- 
enon repeated  in  the  Calton  Hill,  and  in  various  other 
eminences  in  the  neighborhood ;  as  also  in  the  Castle  Hill 
of  Stirling.  And  in  all  these,  and  in  many  other  cases,  the 
tail  which  the  crag  protected  is  turned  towards  the  east, 
indicating  that  the  current  which  in  the  lapse  of  ages 
scooped  out  the  valleys  at  the  sides  of  the  protecting 
crags,  and  in  many  instances  formed,  by  its  eddies,  hollows 
in  advance  of  them,  just  as  we  find  hollows  in  advance  of 
the  larger  stones  of  the  water-course  of  my  illustration, 
was  a  current  which  flowed  from  the  west.  The  testi- 
mony of  the  ice-grooved  rocks,  and  of  the  eminences 
composed  of  crag  and  tail,  bear,  we  see,  in  this  same  line. 
Now,  this  westerly  direction  of  the  current  seems  to  be 
exactly  that  which,  reasoning  from  the  permanent  phe- 


80  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

nomena  of  nature,  might  be  premised.  There  must  have 
been  trade  winds  in  every  period  of  the  world's  history,  in 
which  the  earth  revolved  from  west  to  east  on  its  axis; 
and  with  trade  winds  the  accompanying  drift  current. 
And,  of  consequence,  ever  since  the  existence  of  a  great 
western  continent,  stretching  far  from  south  to  north, 
there  must  have  been  also  a  gulf  stream.  The  waters 
'heaped  up  against  the  coasts  of  this  western  continent  at 
the  equator  by  the  drift  current  ever  flowing  westwards, 
must  have  been  always,  as  now,  returning  eastwards  in 
the  temperate  zone,  to  preserve  the  general  level  of  the 
ocean's  surface.  Ever,  too,  since  winter  took  its  place 
among  the  seasons,  there  must  have  been  an  arctic  current. 
The  ice  and  snows  of  the  higher  latitudes,  that  accumu- 
lated during  the  winter,  must  have  again  melted  in  spring, 
and  early  summer;  and  a  current  must  in  consequence 
have  set  in  as  the  seasons  of  these  came  on,  just  as  we 
now  see  such  a  current  setting  in,  in  these  seasons,  in  both 
hemispheres,  which  bears  the  ice  of  the  antarctic  circle  far 
towards  the  north,  and  the  ice  of  the  arctic  circle  far  to- 
wards the  south.  The  point  at  which,  in  the  existing  state 
of  things,  the  gulf  stream  and  the  arctic  current  come  in 
contact  is  that  occupied  by  the  great  bank  of  Newfound- 
land ;  and  by  some  the  very  existence  of  the  bank  has 
been  attributed  to  their  junction,  and  to  the  vast  accumu- 
lation of  gravel  and  stone  cast  down  year  after  year  from 
the  drift  ice  to  the  bottom,  where  these  two  great  tides 
meet  and  jostle.  Be  this  as  it  may,  the  number  of  boul- 
ders and  the  quantity  of  pebbles  and  gravel  strewed  over 
the  bottom  of  the  western  portions  of  the  Atlantic,  in  the 
line  of  the  arctic  current,  from  the  confines  of  Baffin's  Bay 
up  to  the  forty-fifth  degree  of  north  latitude,  must  be  alto- 
gether enormous.  Captain  Scoresby  counter!  no  fewer 


LECTURES  ON   GEOLOGT.  81 

than  five  hundred  icebergs  setting  out  on  their  southern 
voyage  on  the  arctic  current  at  one  time.  And  wherever 
there  are  shallows  on  which  these  vast  masses  catch  the 
bottom,  or  grate  over  it,  —  shallows  of  from  thirty  to  a 
hundred  fathoms  water,  —  we  may  safely  premise  that  at 
the  present  time  there  is  a  boulder-clay  in  the  course  of 
formation,  with  a  scratched  and  polished  surface  of  rock 
lying  beneath  it,  and  containing  numerous  pebbles  and 
boulders  striated  longitudinally.  That  the  point  where 
the  gulf  and  arctic  currents  come  in  contact  should  now 
lie  sc  far  to  the  west,  is  a  consequence  of  the  present  dis- 
position of  the  arctic  and  western  continents,  —  perhaps 
also  of  the  present  position  of  the  magnetic  pole.  A  dif- 
ferent arrangement  and  position  would  give  a  different 
point  of  meeting ;  and  it  is  as  little  improbable  that  they 
should  have  met  in  the  remote  past  some  two  or  three 
hundred  miles  to  the  west  of  what  is  now  Scotland,  as  that 
in  the  existing  period  they  should  meet  some  two  or  three 
hundred  miles  to  the  east  of  what  is  now  Newfoundland. 
The  northern  current  would  be  deflected  by  the  more  pow- 
erful gulf  stream  into  an  easterly  course,  and  would  go 
sweeping  over  the  submerged  land  in  the  direction  indi- 
cated by  the  grooves  and  scratches,  bearing  with  it  every 
spring  its  many  thousand  gigantic  icebergs,  and  its  fields 
of  sheet-ice  many  hundred  square  miles  in  extent.  And 
these,  armed  beneath  with  great  pebbles  and  boulders,  or 
finding  many  such  resting  at  the  bottom,  by  grinding 
heavily  along  the  buried  surface, —  like  the  rafts  of  my 
illustration  along  the  bed  of  the  river, —  would  gradually 
tvear  down  the  upper  strata  of  the  softer  formations,  leav- 
ing the  clay  which  they  had  thus  formed  to  be  deposited 
over,  and  a  little  to  the  east  of,  the  rocks  that  had  pro- 
duced it.  It  is  further  in  accordance  with  this  theory,  that 


82  LECTURES    OX    UEOLOGY. 

in  Scotland  generally,  the  deeper  deposits  of  the  boulder- 
clay  occur  on  the  eastern  line  of  coast.  The  cutler,  in 
whetting  a  tool  with  water  on  a  flat  Turkey  stone,  drives 
the  gray,  milky  dressings  detached  by  the  friction  of  the 
steel  from  the  solid  mass,  to  the  end  of  the  stone  farthest 
from  himself  and  there  they  accumulate  thick  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  stroke.  And  so  it  is  here.  The  rubbings  of 
the  great  Scotch  whetstone,  acted  upon  by  the  innumer- 
able gravers  and  chisels  whetted  upon  it,  and  held  down 
or  steadied  by  the  icebergs,  have  been  carried  in  the  east- 
erly direction  of  the  stroke,  and  deposited  at  the  further, 
that  is  to  say,  the  eastern,  end  of  the  stone. 

But  fearing  I  have  already  too  much  trespassed  on  your 
time  and  patience,  I  shall  leave  half  told  for  the  present 
the  story  of  the  Pleistocene  period  in  Scotland.  If,  in- 
stead of  presenting  it  to  you  as  ?  piece  of  clear,  condensed 
narrative,  I  have  led  you  darkly  to  grope  your  way 
through  it  by  a  series  of  fatiguing  inductions,  you  will,  I 
trust,  sustain  my  apology,  when  I  remind  you  that  this 
dreary  ice-epoch  in  the  history  of  our  country,  still  forms 
as  debateable  a  terra  incognita  to  the  geologist  as  the 
dreary  ice-tracts  which  surround  the  pole  do  to  the  ge- 
ographer. We  have  been  threading  our  twilight  way 
through  a  difficult  North- West  Passage ;  and  if  our  prog- 
ress has  been  in  some  degree  one  of  weariness  and  fatigue, 
we  must  remember  that  without  weariness  and  fatigue  no 
voyager  ever  yet  explored 

"  The  ice-locked  secrets  of  that  hoary  deep 
Where  fettered  streams  and  frozen  continents 
Lie  dark  and  wild,  beat  with  perpetual  storm 
Of  whirlwind  and  dire  hail." 

"We  might  expect,"  says  Professor  Sedgwick,  "that  as  we 
come  close  upon  living  nature,  the  characters  of  our  old 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY.  88 

records  would  grow  legible  and  clear.  But  just  where  we 
begin  to  enter  on  the  history  of  the  physical  changes  going 
on  before  our  eyes,  and  in  which  we  ourselves  bear  a  part, 
our  chronicle  seems  to  fail  us:  a  leaf  has  been  torn  out 
from  Nature's  book,  and  the  succession  of  events  is  almost 
hidden  from  our  eyes."  Now,  it  is  to  this  age  of  the  drift- 
gravels  and  the  boulder-clay  that  the  accomplished  Pro- 
fessor here  refers,  as  represented  in  the  geologic  record  by 
a  torn  page ;  and  though  we  may  be  disposed  to  view  it 
rather  as  a  darkened  one,  —  much  soiled,  but  certainly  not 
awaiiting,  —  we  must  be  content  to  bestow  on  its  dim,  half- 
obliterated  characters,  more  time  and  care  than  suffice  for 
the  perusal  of  whole  chapters  in  the  earlier  books  of  our 
history.  And  so,  casting  myself  on  your  forbearance,  I 
shall  take  up  the  unfinished  story  of  the  Pleistocene  period 
in  Scotland  in  my  next  address 


LECTURE    SECOND. 

Problem  first  propounded  to  the  Author  in  a  Quarry — The  Quarry's  Two  Depos- 
its, Old  Red  Sandstone  and  Boulder-Clay — The  Boulder-Clay  formed  while  the 
Laud  was  subsiding  — The  Groorings  and  Polishings  of  the  Rocks  in  the  Lower 
Parts  of  the  Country  evidences  of  the  fact  — Sir  Charles  Lyell's  Observations 
on  the  Canadian  Lake  District  — Close  of  the  Boulder-Clay  Record  in  Scotland 
—Its  Continuance  in  England  into  the  Pliocene  Ages— The  Trees  and  Animals 
of  the  Pre-Glacial  Periods  — Elephants'  Tusks  found  in  Scotland  and  England 
regarded  as  the  Remains  of  Giants — Legends  concerning  them  — Marine  De- 
posits beneath  the  Pre-Glacial  Forests  of  England  —  Objections  of  Theologians 
to  the  Geological  Theory  of  the  Antiquity  of  the  Earth  and  of  the  Human 
Race  considered— Extent  of  the  Glacial  Period  in  Scotland  — Evidences  of 
Glacial  Action  in  Glencoe,  Gareloch,  and  the  Highlands  of  Sutherland— Sce- 
nery of  Scotland  owes  its  Characteristics  to  Glacial  Action — The  Period  of 
Elevation  which  succeeded  the  Period  of  Subsidence  —  Its  Indications  in 
Raised  Beaches  and  Subsoils —  How  the  Subsoils  and  Brick  Clays  were  formed 
—  Their  Economic  Importance— Boulder-Stones  interesting  Features  in  the 
Landscape  —  Their  prevalence  in  Scotland  — The  more  remarkable  Ice-trav- 
elled Boulders  described  —  Anecdotes  of  the  "  Travelled  Stone  of  Petty  "  and 
the  Standing  Stone  of  Torribal  —  Elevation  of  the  Land  during  the  Post-Ter- 
tiary Period  which  succeeded  the  Period  of  the  Boulder-Clay— The  Alpine 
Plants  of  Scotland  the  Vegetable  Aborigines  of  the  Country  —  Panoramic 
View  of  the  Pleistocene  and  Post-Tertiary  Periods  — Modern  Science  not 
adverse  to  the  Development  of  the  Imaginative  Faculty. 

I  REMEMBER,  as  distinctly  as  if  I  had  quitted  it  but  yes- 
terday, the  quarry  in  which,  some  two-and-thirty  years 
ago,  I  made  my  first  acquaintance  with  a  life  of  toil  and 
restraint,  and  at  the  same  time  first  broke  ground  as  a 
geologist.  It  formed  a  section  about  thirty  feet  in  height 
by  eighty  or  a  hundred  in  length,  in  the  front  of  a  furze- 
covered  bank,  a  portion  of  the  old  coast  line ;  and  pre- 
sented an  under  bar  of  a  deep-red  sandstone  arranged  in 
nearly  horizontal  strata,  and  an  upper  bar  of  a  pale-red 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  85 

clay  roughened  by  projecting  pebbles  and  boulders.  Both 
deposits  at  the  time  were  almost  equally  unknown  to  the 
geologist.  The  deep-red  sandstone  beneath  formed  a  por- 
tion of  that  ancient  Old  Red  system  which  represents,  as 
is  now  known,  the  second  great  period  of  vertebrate  exist- 
ence on  our  planet,  and  which  has  proved  to  the  palaeon- 
tologist so  fertile  a  field  of  wonders :  the  pale  clay  above 
was  a  deposit  of  the  boulder-clay,  resting  on  a  grooved 
and  furrowed  surface  of  rock,  and  containing  in  abundance 
its  scratched  and  polished  pebbles.  Old  Red  Sandstone 
and  boulder-clay!  a  broad  bar  of  each;  —  such  was  the 
compound  problem  propounded  to  me  by  the  Fate  that 
dropped  me  in  a  quarry ;  and  I  gave  to  both  the  patient 
study  of  years.  But  the  older  deposit  soon  became  frank 
and  communicative,  and  yielded  up  its  organisms  in  abun- 
dance, which  furnished  me  with  many  a  curious  little  anec- 
dote of  their  habits  when  living,  and  of  the  changes  which 
had  passed  over  them  when  dead ;  and  I  was  enabled, 
with  little  assistance  from  brother  geologists,  to  give  a  his- 
tory of  the  system  to  the  world  more  than  ten  years  ago. 
The  boulder-clay,  on  the  contrary,  remained  for  years  in- 
vincibly silent  and  sullen.  I  remember  a  time  when,  after 
passing  a  day  under  its  barren  scaurs,  or  hid  in  its  precip- 
itous ravines,  I  used  to  feel  in  the  evening  as  if  I  had  been 
travelling  under  the  cloud  of  night,  and  had  seen  nothing. 
It  was  a  morose  and  taciturn  companion,  and  had  no  spec- 
ulation in  it.  I  might  stand  in  front  of  its  curved  preci- 
pices, red,  yellow,  or  gray  (according  to  the  prevailing 
color  of  the  rocks  on  which  it  rested),  and  might  mark 
their  water-rolled  boulders  of  all  kinds  and  sizes  sticking 
^»ut  in  bold  relief  from  the  surface,  like  the  protuberances 
that  roughen  the  rustic  basements  of  the  architect ;  but  I 
had  no  "  Open  Sesame"  to  form  vistas  through  them  into 


•ib  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

die  recesses  of  the  past.  And  even  now,  when  I  have, 
I  think,  begun  to  understand  the  boulder-clay  a  little,  and 
it  has  become  sociable  enough  to  indulge  me  with  occa- 
sional glimpses  of  its  early  history  in  the  old  glacial  period, 
—  glimpses  of  a  half-submerged  land,  and  an  iceberg-mot- 
tled sea,  turbid  with  the  comminuted  debris  of  the  rocks 
below, —  you  will  see  how  very  much  I  have  had  to  borrow 
from  the  labors  of  others,  and  that,  in  worming  my  way 
into  its  secret,  there  are  obscure  recesses  within  its  pre- 
cincts into  which  I  have  failed  to  penetrate.  Let  us  now, 
however,  resume  its  half-told  story. 

There  are  appearances  which  lead  us  to  conclude,  that 
during  the  formation  and  deposition  of  the  boulder-clay, 
what  is  now  Scotland  was  undergoing  a  gradual  subsid- 
ence,—  gradually  foundering  amid  the  waves,  if  I  may  so 
speak,  like  a  slowly-sinking  vessel,  and  presenting,  as  cen- 
tury succeeded  century,  hills  of  lower  and  yet  lower  alti- 
tude, and  an  ever  lessening  area.  I  was  gratified  to  find, 
that  when  reasoning  out  the  matter  for  myself,  and  arriv- 
ing at  this  conclusion  from  the  examination  of  one  special 
set  of  data,  Mr.  Charles  Darwin  was  arriving  at  the  same 
conclusion  from  the  consideration  of  a  second  and  entirely 
different  set ;  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell  —  from  whom,  on  the 
publication  of  my  views  in  the  "Witness"  newspaper  some 
four  years  since,  I  received  a  kind  and  interesting  note  on 
the  subject  —  had  also  arrived  at  the  same  conclusion  — 
North  America  being  the  scene  of  his  observations  —  from 
the  consideration  of  yet  a  third  and  equally  distinct  set. 
And  in  the  "  Geological  Journal "  for  the  present  year,  I 
find  Mr.  Joshua  Trimmer  and  Mr.  Austin  arriving,  from 
evidence  equally  independent,  at  a  similar  finding.  We " 
have  all  come  to  infer,  in  short,  that  previous  to  the  Drift 
period  the  land  had  stood  at  a  comparatively  high  level, — 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  87 

perhaps  higher  than  it  does  now ;  that  ages  of  depression 
canie  on,  during  which  the  land  sank  many  hundred  feet, 
and  the  sea  rose  high  on  the  hill-sides ;  and  that  during 
these  ages  of  depression  the  boulder-clay  was  formed. 
Let  me  state  briefly  some  of  the  considerations  on  which 
we  found. 

The  boulder-clay,  I  thus  reasoned  with  myself,  is  gener- 
ally found  to  overlie  more  deeply  the  lower  parts  of  the 
country  than  those  higher  parts  which  approach  its  upper 
limit ;  and  yet  the  rocks  on  which  it  rests,  in  some  local- 
ities to  the  depth  of  a  hundred  feet  at  even  the  level  of 
the  sea,  bear  as  decidedly  their  groovings  and  polishings 
as  those  on  which,  eight  hundred  feet  over  the  sea-level, 
it  reposes  to  but  the  depth  of  a  yard  or  two.  Now,  had 
a  rising  land  been  subjected  piecemeal  to  the  grinding 
action  of  the  icebergs,  this  would  not  have  been  the  case. 
The  higher  rocks  first  subjected  to  their  action  would  of 
course  bear  the  groovings  and  furrowings ;  but  the  argil- 
laceous dressings  detached  from  them  in  the  process,  mixed 
with  the  stones  and  pebbles  which  the  ice  had  brought 
along  with  it,  would  necessarily  come  to  be  deposited  in 
the  form  of  boulder-clay  on  the  lower  rocks ;  and  ere  these 
lower  rocks  could  be  brought,  by  the  elevation  of  the 
land,  within  reach  of  the  grinding  action  of  the  icebergs, 
they  would  be  so  completely  covered  up  and  shielded  by 
the  deposit,  that  the  bergs  would  fail  to  come  in  contact 
with  them.  They  would  go  sweeping,  not  over  the  rocks 
themselves,  but  over  the  clay  by  which  the  rocks  had  been 
covered  up;  and  so  we  may  safely  infer  that,  had  the 
boulder-clay  been  formed  during  an  elevating  period,  the 
lower  rocks,  where  thickly  covered  by  the  clay,  would  not 
be  scratched  and  grooved  as  we  now  find  them,  or,  where 
scratched  and  grooved, 'would  not  be  thickly  covered  by 


88  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

the  clay.  The  existing  phenomena,  deep  grooves  and 
polished  stria?,  on  rocks  overlaid  at  the  present  sea-level 
to  a  great  depth  by  the  boulder-clay,  demand  for  their 
production  the  reverse  condition  of  a  sinking  land,  in 
which  the  lower  rocks  are  first  subjected  to  the  action  of 
the  icebergs,  and  the  higher  rocks  after  them.  The  quar- 
rier,  when  he  has  to  operate  on  some  stratum  of  rock  on  a 
hill-side,  has  to  commence  his  labors  below,  and  to  throw 
the  rubbish  which  he  forms  behind  him,  leaving  an  open 
face  in  front ;  for,  were  he  to  reverse  the  process,  and  com- 
mence above,  the  accumulating  debris,  ever  seeking  down- 
wards, would  at  length  so  choke  up  the  working  as  to 
arrest  his  labors.  And  such,  we  infer  from  the  work  done, 
must  have  been  the  course  of  operations  imposed  by  the 
conditions  of  a  sinking  land  on  the  icebergs  of  the  glacial 
period :  they  began  their  special  course  of  action  at  the 
hill-foot,  and  operated  upon  its  surface  upwards  as  the 
sea  arose.  Again,  Mr.  Darwin's  reasonings  were  mainly 
founded  on  the  significant  fact,  that  in  numerous  instances 
travelled  boulders  of  the  ice  period  may  be  found  on  levels 
considerably  higher  than  those  of  the  rocks  from  which 
they  were  originally  torn.  And  though  cases  of  transport 
from  a  lower  to  a  higher  level  could  and  would  take  place 
during  a  period  of  subsidence,  when  the  sea  was  rising  or 
the  land  sinking,  it  is  impossible  that  it  could  have  taken 
place  during  an  elevating  period,  when  the  sea  was  sink- 
ing or  the  land  rising.1  A  flowing  sea,  to  use  a  simple 
illustration,  frequently  carries  shells,  pebbles,  and  sea-weed 
from  the  level  of  ebb  to  the  level  of  flood;  —  it  brings 
them  from  a  low  to  a  high  level :  whereas  an  ebbing  sea 

1  See  Mr.  Trimmer's  last  paper  on  Boulder-Clays,  "  Journal  of  the  Geo- 
lo-iru]  Society,"  May,  18-38,  p.  171.  — W.  S. 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY.  89 

can  but  reverse  the  process,  by  bringing  them  from  a  high 
level  to  a  low. 

For  the  facts  and  reasonings  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell  on  the 
subject  I  must  refer  you  —  as  they  are  incapable  of  being 
abridged  without  being  injured  —  to  that  portion  of  his 
first  work  of  Travels  in  America  which  treats  of  the  Cana- 
dian Lake  District.  But  the  following  are  his  conclusions : 
"First?  he  says,  "the  country  acquired  its  present  geo- 
graphical configuration,  so  far  as  relates  to  the  older  rocks, 
under  the  joint  influence  of  elevating  and  denuding  oper- 
ations. Secondly,  a  gradual  submergence  then  took  place, 
bringing  down  each  part  of  the  land  successively  to  the 
level  of  the  waters,  and  then  to  a  moderate  depth  below 
them.  Large  islands  and  bergs  of  floating  ice  came  from 
the  north,  which,  as  they  grounded  on  the  coast  and  on 
shoals,  pushed  along  all  loose  materials  of  sand  and  peb- 
bles, broke  ofi"  all  angular  and  projecting  points  of  rock, 
and,  when  fragments  of  hard  stone  were  frozen  into  their 
lower  surfaces,  scooped  out  grooves  in  the  subjacent  solid 
strata.  Thirdly,  after  the  surface  of  the  rocks  had  been 
smoothed  and  grated  upon  by  the  passage  of  innumerable 
icebergs,  the  clay,  gravel,  and  sand  of  the  Drift  were  de- 
posited; and  occasionally  fragments  of  rock,  both  large 
and  small,  which  had  been  frozen  into  glaciers,  or  taken 
up  by  coast-ice,  were  dropped  here  and  there  at  random 
over  the  bottom  of  the  ocean,  wherever  they  happened  to 
be  detached  from  the  melting  ice.  Finally,  the  period  of 
reelevation  arrived,  or  of  that  intermittent  upward  move- 
ment in  which  the  old  coast  lines  were  excavated  and  the 
ancient  sand  bars  or  osars  laid  down."  Such  are  the  con- 
clusions at  which  Sir  Charles  Lyell  arrived  a  few  years 
since  respecting  the  Canadian  Lake  District ;  and  he 
states,  in  the  note  to  which  I  have  referred,  that  he  has 

8* 


00  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOtiV. 

ever  since  been  applying  them  to  Scotland.  Our  country, 
during  the  chill  and  dreary  period  of  the  boulder-clay, 
seems  to  have  been  settling  down  into  the  waves,  like  the 
vessel  of  some  hapless  Arctic  explorer  struck  by  the  ice 
in  middle  ocean,  and  sinking  by  inches  amid  a  wild  scene 
of  wintry  desolation. 

There  are  a  few  detached  localities  in  Scotland  where 
the  remains  of  beds  of  stratified  sand  and  gravel  have 
been  detected  underlying  the  boulder-clay ;  and  in  some 
of  these  in  the  valley  of  the  Clyde,  Mr.  Smith,  of  Jordan- 
hill,  found,  on  a  late  occasion,  shells  of  the  same  semi- 
arctic  character  as  those  which  occur  in  the  clay  itself. 
And  with  these  stratified  beds  the  record  in  Scotland 
closes;  whereas  in  England  we  find  it  carried  interest- 
ingly onward  from  the  Pleistocene  period,  first  into  the 
newer,  and  then  into  the  older,  Pliocene  ages.  I  stated 
incidentally  in  my  former  address,  that  some  of  the  mosses 
of  the  sister  kingdom,  unlike  those  of  our  own  country, 
are  older  than  the  Drift  period  ;  and,  from  the  existence  of 
these  under  the  Drift  gravels  and  brown  clay,  it  has  been 
inferred  by  Mr.  Trimmer,  that  as  the  trees  which  enter 
into  their  composition  grew  upon  the  surface  of  what  is 
now  England,  where  they  now  lie,  previous  to  the  period 
of  the  boulder-clay,  and  as  the  boulder-clay  is,  as  shown 
by  its  remains,  decidedly  marine,  it  must  have  been  depos- 
ited during  a  period  of  depression,  when  what  had  been  a 
forest-bearing  surface  was  lowered  beneath  the  level  of  the 
sea.  None  of  the  trees  of  these  ancient  pre-glacial  forests 
seem  to  be  of  extinct  species;  the  birch  and  Scotch  fir 
are  among  their  commonest  forms,  especially  the  fir.  I 
find  it  stated,  however,  as  a  curious  fact,  that  along  with 
these,  the  Abies  E/xcelsa,  or  Norwegian  spruce-pine,  is 
found  to  occur,  —  a  tree  which,  though  introduced  by  man 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  91 

into  our  country,  and  now  not  very  rare  in  our  woods,  has 
not  been  of  indigenous  growth  in  any  British  forest  since 
the  times  of  the  boulder-clay.  Though  the  species  con- 
tinued to  live  in  Norway,  it  became  extinct  in  Britain  ; 
and  it  has  been  suggested,  that  as  it  was  during  the  Drift 
period  that  it  disappeared,  it  may  have  owed  its  extirpa- 
tion to  the  depression  of  the  land,  while  its  contemporaries 
the  birch  and  fir  were  preserved  on  our  northern  heights. 
When  this  Norwegian  pine  flourished  in  Britain,  the  island 
was  inhabited  by  a  group  of  quadrupeds  now  never  seen 
associated,  save  perhaps  in  a  menagerie.  Mixed  with  the 
remains  of  animals  still  native  to  our  country,  such  as  the 
otter,  the  badger,  and  the  red  deer,  there  have  been  found 
skeletons  of  the  Lagomy,  or  tailless  hare,  now  an  inhab- 
itant of  the  cold  heights  of  Siberia,  and  horns  of  the  rein- 
deer, a  species  now  restricted  in  Europe  to  northern 
Scandinavia,  and  those  inhospitable  tracts  of  western 
Russia  that  border  on  the  Arctic  Sea.  And  with  these 
boreal  forms  there  were  associated,  as  shown  by  their  bones 
and  tusks,  the  elephant,  the  rhinoceros,  and  the  hippopota- 
mus, —  all,  however,  of  extinct  species,  and  fitted  for  liv- 
ing under  widely  different  climatal  conditions  from  those 
essential  to  the  well-being  of  their  intertropical  congeners.1 
Scotland,  though  it  has  proved  much  less  rich  than  Eng- 
land in  the  remains  of  the  early  Pleistocene  mammals,  has 
furnished  a  few  well-attested  elephantine  fossils.  In  the 
summer  of  1821,  in  the  course  of  cutting  the  Union  Canal, 
there  was  found  in  the  boulder-clay  near  Falkirk,  on  the 
Clifton  Hall  property,  about  twenty  feet  from  the  surface, 

1  The  true  mammoth,  with  the  tichorine  rhinoceros  and  the  mnsk  buf- 
falo, are  the  leading  types  of  the  mammalian  fauna  of  the  Glacial  Drift 
epoch.  The  remains  of  hippopotamus  would  be  washed  out  of  older  beds. 
—  W.  S. 


92  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

a  large  portion  of  the  tusk  of  an  elephant,  three  feet  three 
inches  in  length,  and  thirteen  inches  in  circumference  ;  and 
such  was  its  state  of  keeping  when  first  laid  open,  that  it 
was  sold  to  an  ivory-turner  by  the  laborers  that  found  it, 
and  was  not  rescued  from  his  hands  until  a  portion  of  it 
had  been  cut  up  for  chessmen.  Two  other  elephants' 
tusks  were  found  early  in  1817,  at  Kilmaurs,1  in  Ayrshire, 
on  a  property  of  the  Earl  of  Eglinton,  —  one  of  them  so 
sorely  decayed  that  it  could  not  be  removed ;  but  a  portion 
of  the  other,  with  the  rescued  portion  of  the  Falkirk  tusk, 
may  be  seen  in  the  Museum  of  our  Edinburgh  University, 
which  also  contains,  I  may  here  mention,  the  horn  of  a 
rhinoceros,  found  at  the  bottom  of  a  morass  in  Forfarshire, 
but  which,  in  all  probability,  as  it  stands  alone  among  the 
organisms  of  our  mosses,  had  been  washed  out  of  some 
previously  formed  deposit  of  the  Drift  period.  Scotland 
seems  to  have  furnished  several  other  specimens  of  ele- 
phantine remains;  but  as  they  were  brought  to  light  in 
ages  in  which  comparative  anatomy  was  unknown,  and 
men  believed  that  the  human  race  had  been  of  vast 
strength  and  stature  in  the  primeval  ages,  but  were  fast 
sinking  into  dwarfs,  they  were  regarded  as  the  remains  of 
giants.  Some  of  the  legends  to  which  the  bones  of  these 
supposed  giants  served  to  give  rise  in  England,  occupy  a 
place  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  country's  history,  as  told 
by  the  monkish  chroniclers,  and  have  their  grotesque  but 
widely-known  memorials  in  Gog  and  Mngog,  the  wooden 
giants  of  Guildhall :  our  Scottish  legends  of  the  same  class 
are  less  famous ;  but  to  one  of  their  number  —  charged 

1  At  a  later  period  (December  1829),  similar  elephantine  tusks  were 
found  thirty-four  feet  beneath  the  surface,  in  boulder-clay  overlying  the 
quarry  of  Greenhill,  also  in  Kilmaurs  parish;  and  they  may  now  be  seen 
in  the  Hunterian  Museum,  Glasgow. 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  93 

with  an  argument  in  behalf  of  the  temperance  cause  of 
which  our  friends  the  teetotalers  have  not  yet  availed 
themselves  —  I  may  be  permitted  briefly  to  refer,  in  the 
words  of  one  of  our  elder  historians.  "  In  Murray  land," 
says  the  believing  Hector  Boece,  "  is  the  Kirke  of  Pette, 
quhare  the  bones  of  Litell  Johne  remainis  in  gret  admira- 
tion of  pepill.  He  hes  bene  fourtene  feet  of  hicht,  with 
squaire  membres  offering  thairto.  Six  yeirs  afore  the 
coming  of  this  work  to  licht  (1520),  we  saw  his  henche 
bane,  as  meikle  as  the  haill  banes  of  ane  manne ;  for  we 
schot  our  arme  into  the  mouthe  thairof ;  be  quhilk  appeirs 
how  strang  and  squaire  pepill  greu  in  cure  regeoun  afore 
thay  were  effeminat  with  lust  and  intemperance  of  mouthe." 
Under  these  pre-glacial  forests  of  England  there  rests  a 
marine  deposit,  rich  in  shells  and  quadrupedal  remains, 
known  as  the  Norwich  or  Mammaliferous  Crag;  and  be- 
neath it,  in  turn,  lie  the  Red  and  Coralline  Crags,  —  mem- 
bers of  the  Pliocene  period.  In  the  Mammaliferous  Crag 
there  appear  a  few  extinct  shells,  blent  with  shells  still 
common  on  our  coasts.  In  the  Red  Crag  the  number  of 
extinct  species  greatly  increases,  rising,  it  is  now  estimated, 
to  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  whole ;  while  in  the  Coralline 
Crag  the  increase  is  greater  still,  the  extinct  shells  averag- 
ing about  forty  per  cent.1  In  these  deposits  some  of  our 
best  known  molluscs  appear  in  creation  for  the  first  time. 
The  common  edible  oyster  ( Ostrea  edulis)  occurs  in  the 
Coralline  Crag,  but  in  no  older  formation,  and  with  it  the 
great  pecten  (Pecten  maximus),  the  horee  mussel  (Modi- 
ola  vulgaris),  and  the  common  whelk  (Buccinum  unda- 
twri).  Other  equally  well-known  shells  make  their  advent 

1  The  known  species  of  shells  in  the  Coralline  Crag  amount  to  three 
hundred  and  forty.  Of  these,  seventy-three  are  living  British  species. 
See  Woodward's  "  Manual,"  part  iii.  p.  421.  —  W.  S. 


94  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

at  a  still  later  period;  the  common  mussel  (Mytilus  nln- 
lis),  the  common  periwinkle  (Littorina  littoreci),  and,  in 
Britain  at  least,  the  dog-whelk  (Purpura  lapillus),  first 
appear  in  the  overlying  Red  Crag,  and  are  not  known  in 
the  older  Coralline  formation.  By  a  certain  very  extended 
period,  represented  by  the  Coralline  Crag,  the  edible  oyster 
seems  to  be  older  than  the  edible  mussel,  and  the  common 
whelk  than  the  common  periwinkle ;  and  I  call  your  spe- 
cial attention  to  the  fact,  as  representative  of  a  numerous 
class  of  geological  facts  that  bear  on  certain  questions  of 
a  semi-theological  character,  occasionally  mooted  in  the 
religious  periodicals  of  the  day.  There  are  few  theolo- 
gians worthy  of  the  name  who  now  hold  that  the  deduc- 
tions of  the  geologists  regarding  the  earth's  antiquity  are 
at  variance  with  the  statements  of  Scripture  respecting 
its  first  creation,  and  subsequent  preparation  for  man. 
But  some  of  them  do  seem  to  hold  that  the  scheme  of 
reconciliation,  found  sufficient  when  this  fact  of  the  earth's 
antiquity  was  almost  the  only  one  with  which  .we  had  to 
grapple,  should  be  deemed  sufficient  still,  when  science,  in 
its  onward  progress,  has  called  on  us  to  deal  with  this  new 
fact  of  the  very  unequal  antiquity  of  the  plants  and  ani- 
mals still  contemporary  with  man,  and  with  the  further 
fact,  that  not  a  few  of  them  must  have  been  living  upon 
the  earth  thousands  of  years  ere  he  himself  was  ushered 
upon  it,  —  facts  of  course  wholly  incompatible  with  any 
scheme  of  interpretation  that  would  fix  the  date  of  their 
first  appearance  only  a  few  natural  days  in  advance  of  that 
of  his  own.  We  have  no  good  reason  to  hold  that  the 
human  species  existed  upon  earth  during  the  times  of  the 
boulder-clay:  such  a  belief  would  conflict,  as  shown  by  the 
antiquity  of  the  ancient  and  existing  coast  lines,  with  our 
received  chronologies  of  the  race.  But  long  previous  to 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  95 

these  times,  the  Norwegian  spruce  pine  and  the  Scotch  fir 
were  natives  of  the  pre-glacial  forests  of  our  country ;  at 
even  an  earlier  period  the  common  periwinkle  and  edible 
mussel  lived  in  the  seas  of  the  Red  Crag  deposits ;  and  at 
a  still  earlier  time,  the  great  pecten,  the  whelk,  and  the 
oyster,  in  those  of  the  Coralline  Crag.  We  can  now  no 
more  hold,  as  geologists,  that  the  plants  and  animals  of 
the  existing  creation  eame  into  being  only  a  few  hours 
or  a  few  days  previous  to  man,  than  that  the  world  itself 
came  into  being  only  six  thousand  years  ago ;  and  we  do 
think  we  have  reason  to  complain  of  theologians  who, 
ignorant  of  the  facts  with  which  we  have  to  deal,  and  in 
no  way  solicitous  to  acquaint  themselves  with  them,  set 
themselves  coolly  to  criticize  our  well-meant  endeavors  to 
reconcile  the  Scripture  narrative  of  creation  with  the  more 
recent  findings  of  our  science,  and  who  pronounce  them 
inadmissible,  not  because  they  do  not  effect  the  desired 
reconciliation,  but  simply  because  they  are  now  to  theol- 
ogy. They  should  remember  that  the  difficulty  also  is 
new  to  theology;  that  enigmas  cannot  be  solved  until 
they  are  first  propounded ;  that  if  the  riddle  be  in  reality 
a  new  one,  the  answer  to  it  must  of  necessity  be  new  like- 
wise ;  and  as  this  special  riddle  has  been  submitted  to  the 
geologists  when  the  theologians  were  unaware  of  its  exist- 
ence, it  must  not  be  held  a  legitimate  objection,  that  geolo- 
gists, who  feel  that  they  possess,  as  responsible  men,  a  stake 
in  the  question,  should  be  the  first  to  attempt  solving  it. 
If,  however,  it  be,  as  I  suspect,  with  our  facts,  not  with  our 
schemes  of  reconciliation,  that  the  quarrel  in  reality  lies, 
—  if  it  be,  in  particular,  with  the  special  fact  of  the  une- 
qual antiquity  of  the  existing  plants  and  animals,  and  the 
comparatively  recent  introduction  of  man,  —  I  would  fain 
urge  the  objectors  to  examine  ere  they  decide,  and  not 


9S  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

r:ishly  and  in  ignorance  to  commit  themselves  against 
truths  which  every  day  must  render  more  palpable  and 
clear,  and  which  are  destined  long  to  outlive  all  cavil  and 
opposition. 

With  respect  to  the  antiquity  of  our  race,  we  have,  as  I 
have  said,  no  good  grounds  to  believe  that  man  existed 
upon  the  earth  during  what  in  Britain,  and  that  portion 
of  the  continent  which  lies  under  the  same  lines  of  lati- 
tude, were  the  times  of  the  boulder-clay  and  Drift  gravels. 
None  of  the  human  remains  yet  found  seem  more  ancient 
than  the  historic  period,  in  at  least  the  older  nations ;  it  is 
now  held  that  the  famous  skeletons  of  Guadaloupe  be- 
longed to  men  and  women  who  must  have  lived  since  the 
discovery  of  America  by  Columbus;  and  if  in  other  parts 
of  the  world  there  have  been  detected  fragments  of  the 
human  frame  associated  with  those  of  the  long  extinct 
animals,  there  is  always  reason  to  conclude  that  they  owe 
such  proximity  to  that  burying  propensity  to  which  I  have 
already  adverted,  or  to  accidents  resulting  from  it,  and  not 
to  any  imaginary  circumstance  of  contemporarily  of  exist- 
ence. If  man  buries  his  dead  in  the  Gault  or  the  London 
Clay,  human  reniains  will  of  course  be  found  mingled  with 
those  of  the  Gault  or  the  London  Clay;  but  the  evidence 
furnished  by  any  such  mixture  will  merely  serve  to  show, 
not  that  the  existences  to  which  the  remains  belonged  had 
lived  in  the  same  age,  but  simply  that  they  had  been 
deposited  in  the  same  formation.  Nor  can  I  attach  much 
value  to  the  supposed  historic  records  of  countries  such  as 
Kgypt,  in  which  dynasties  arc  represented  as  having  flour- 
ished thousands  of  years  ere  the  era  of  Abraham.  Tlu< 
chronicles  of  all  nations  have  their  fabulous  introductory 
]  tort  ions.  No  one  now  attaches  any  value  to  the  record 
of  the  eighty  kings  that  are  said  to  have  reigned  in  Scot- 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  97 

land  between  the  times  of  Fergus  the  First  and  Constan- 
tino the  Bold ;  or  to  that  portion  of  old  English  history 
which  treats  of  the  dynasty  of  Brutus  the  Parricide,  or 
his  wars  with  the  giants.  All  the  ancient  histories  have, 
as  Buchanan  tells  us,  in  disposing  of  the  English  claims, 
their  beginnings  obscured  by  fable  ;  nor  is  it  probable  that 
the  Egyptian  history  is  an  exception  to  all  the  others,  or 
that  its  laboriously  inscribed  and  painfully  interpreted 
hieroglyphics  were  more  exclusively  devoted  to  the  re- 
cording of  real  events  than  characters  simpler  of  form  and 
easier  of  perusal.  If,  as  some  contend,  man  has  been  a 
denizen  of  this  world  for  some  ten  or  twelve  thousand 
years,  what,  I  would  ask,  was  he  doing  the  first  five  or  six 
thousand?  It  was  held  by  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  that  the 
species  must  have  been  of  recent  introduction  on  eai-th, 
seeing  that  all  the  great  human  discoveries  and  inventions, 
such  as  letters,  the  principles  of  geometry  and  arithmetic, 
printing,  and  the  mariner's  compass,  lie  within  the  historic 
period.  The  mind  of  man  could  not,  he  inferred,  have 
been  very  long  at  work,  or,  from  its  very  constitution,  it 
would  have  discovered  and  invented  earlier ;  and  all  his- 
tory and  all  archaeological  research  bear  out  the  inference 
of  the  philosopher.  The  older  civilized  nations  lie  all 
around  the  original  centre  of  the  race  in  Western  Asia ; 
nor  do  we  find  any  trace  of  a  great  city  older  than  Nine- 
veh, or  of  a  great  kingdom  that  preceded  in  its  rise  that 
of  Egypt.  The  average  life  of  great  nations  does  not 
exceed  twelve,  or  at  most  fifteen,  hundred  years ;  and  the 
first  great  nations  were,  we  find,  living  within  the  memory 
of  letters.  Geology,  too,  scarce  less  certainly  than  Reve- 
lation itself,  testifies  that  the  last-born  of  creation  was 
man,  and  that  his  appearance  on  earth  is  one  of  the  most 

9 


98  LECTURES    OX    <!  EULOGY. 

recent  events  of  which  it  submits  the  memorials  to  its 
votaries. 

But  to  return :  The  glacial  or  ice  period  in  Scotland 
seems  to  have  extended  from  the  times  of  the  stratified 
beds,  charged  with  sub-arctic  shells,  which  underlie  the 
boulder-clay,  until  the  land,  its  long  period  of  depression 
over,  was  again  rising,  and  had  attained  to  an  elevation 
less  by  only  fifty  or  a  hundred  feet  than  that  which  it  at 
present  maintains.  Such  is  the  height  over  the  sea-level, 
of  the  raised  beach  at  Gami'ie  in  BanfFshire ;  and  in  it  the 
arctic  shells  last  appear.  And  to  the  greatly-extended 
sub-arctic  period  in  Scotland  there  -belong  a  class  of  ap- 
pearances which  have  been  adduced  in  support  of  a  glacial 
as  opposed  to  an  iceberg  theory.  But  there  is  in  reality  no 
antagonism  in  the  case.  After  examining  not  a  few  of 
our  Highland  glens,  especially  those  on  the  north-western 
coast  of  the  country,  I  have  arrived  at  the  conviction, 
that  Scotland  had  at  one  time  its  glaciers,  which,  like  those 
of  Iceland,  descended  along  its  valleys,  from  its  inland 
heights,  to  the  sea.  And  as  in  most  cases  certain  well- 
marked  accompaniments  of  the  true  glacier,  such  as  those 
lateral  and  transverse  moraines  of  detached  rock  and 
gravel  that  accumulate  along  their  sides  and  at  their  lower 
terminations,  are  wanting  in  Scotland,  it  is  inferred  that 
great  currents  must  have  swept  over  the  countiy  since  the 
period  of  their  existence,  and  either  washed  their  moraines 
away,  or  so  altered  their  character  and  appearance  that 
they  can  be  no  longer  recognized  as  moraines.  Of  course, 
this  sweeping  process  might  have  taken  place  during  that 
period  of  profound  subsidence  when  the  boulder-clay  was 
formed,  and  in  a  posterior  period  of  more  partial  subsidence, 
which  is  held  to  have  taken  place  at  a  later  time  and  un- 
der milder  climatal  conditions,  and  which  is  said  to  have 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  99 

brought  down  the  land  to  its  present  level  from  a  considera- 
bly higher  one.  In  many  localities  there  rests  over  the  true 
boulder-clay  an  argillaceous  or  gravelly  deposit,  in  which 
the  masses  and  fragments  of  rock  are  usually  angular,  ar>«^ 
which,  even  where  the  boulder-clay  is  shell-bearing,  coifr" 
tains  no  shells.  There  are  other  localities  in  which  a  sin*-- 
ilar  deposit  also  underlies  the  boulder-clay;  and  these 
deposits,  upper  and  lower,  are  in  all  probability  the  debris 
of  glaciers  that  existed  in  our  country  during  the  ice  era, 
—  the  lower  deposit  being  the  debris  of  glaciers  that  had 
existed  previous  to  the  glacial  period  of  subsidence,  and 
the  upper  that  of  glaciers  which  had  existed  posterior  to 
it,  and  when  the  land  was  rising.  The  evidence  is,  I  think, 
conclusive,  that  glaciers  there  were.  I  examined,  during 
the  autumn  of  last  year,  the  famous  Glencoe,  and  can  now 
entertain  no  more  doubt  that  a  glacier  once  descended 
along  the  bottom  of  that  deep  and  rugged  valley,  filling  it 
up  from  side  to  side  to  the  depth  of  from  a  hundred  and 
fifty  to  two  hundred  feet,  than  that  an  actual  glacier  de- 
scends at  the  present  day  along  the  valley  of  the  Aar  or 
of  the  Grindelwald.  The  higher  precipices  of  Glencoe  are 
among  the  most  rugged  in  the  kingdom :  we  reach  a  cer- 
tain level;  and,  though  no  change  takes  place  in  the  qual- 
ity of  the  rock,  all  becomes  rounded  and  smooth,  through 
the  agency,  evidently,  of  the  vanished  ice  river,  whose  old 
line  of  surface  we  can  still  point  out  from  the  continuous 
mark  on  the  sides  of  precipices,  beneath  which  all  is  smooth, 
and  above  which  all  is  rugged,  and  whose  scratchings  and 
groovings  we  can  trace  on  the  hard  porphyry  descending 
towards  the  Atlantic,  even  beyond  where  the  sea  occupies 
the  bottom  of  the  valley.  The  lines  and  grooves  running 
in  a  reverse  direction  to  those  of  the  icebergs,  for  their 
course  is  towards  the  west,  are  distinctly  discernible  as  far 


100  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

down  as  Ballachulish  ferry.  Similar  marks  of  a  great  gla- 
cier in  the  valley  of  the  Gareloch  have  been  carefully 
traced  and  shrewdly  interpreted  by  Mr.  Charles  M'Laren. 
But  nowhere  have  I  seen  the  evidence  of  glacial  action 
more  decided  than  in  the  Highlands  of  Sutherland,  over 
which  I  travelled  last  August  more  than  a  hundred  and 
fifty  miles,  for  the  purpose  of  observation.  There  is  scarce 
a  valley  in  that  wild  region,  whether  it  open  towards  the 
northern  or  western  Atlantic,  or  upon  the  German  Ocean, 
that  in  this  ungenial  period  was  not  cumbered,  like  the 
valleys  of  the  upper  Alps,  by  its  burden  of  slowly  descend- 
ing ice.  Save  where,  in  a  few  localities  on  the  lower  slopes 
of  the  hills,  the  true  boulder-clay  appears,  almost  all  the 
subsoil  of  the  country,  whei'e  it  has  a  subsoil,  is  composed 
of  a  loose,  unproductive  glacial  debris;  almost  every 
prominence  on  the  mountain-sides  is  rounded  by  the  long- 
protracted  action  of  the  ice;  and  in  many  instances  the 
surfaces  of  the  rocks  bear  the  characteristic  groovings  and 
scratchings  as  distinctly  as  if  it  had  performed  its  work 
upon  them  but  yesterday.  Let  me,  however,  repeat  the 
remark,  that  the  iceberg  and  glacial  theories,  so  far  from 
being  antagonistic,  ought  rather  to  be  regarded  as  equally 
indispensable  parts  of  one  and  the  same  theory,  —  parts 
which,  when  separated,  leave  a  vast  amount  of  residual 
phenomena  to  puzzle  and  perplex,  that  we  find  fully  ac- 
counted for  by  their  conjunction.  And  why  not  conjoin 
them?  The  fact  that  more  than  four  thousand  square 
miles  of  the  interior  of  Iceland  are  covered  by  glaciers,  is 
in  no  degree  invalidated  by  the  kindred  fact  that  its  shores 
are  visited  every  spring  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  ice- 
bergs. 

The  glnciers  of  Scotland  have,  like  its  icebergs,  contrib- 
uted their  distinctive  quota  to  the  scenery  of  the  country. 


LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY.  101 

The  smoothed  and  rounded  prominences  of  the  hills,  bare 
and  gray  amid  the  scanty  heath,  and  that  often  after  a  sud- 
den shower  gleam  bright  to  the  sun,  like  the  sides  and 
bows  of  windward-beating  vessels  wet  by  the  spray  of  a 
summer  gale,  form  well-marked  features  in  the  landscapes 
of  the  north-western  parts  of  Sutherland  and  Ross,  espec- 
ially in  the  gneiss  and  quartz-rock  districts.  The  lesser 
islets,  too,  of  these  tracts,  whether  they  rise  in  some  soli- 
tary lochan  among  the  hills,  or  in  some  arm  of  the  sea 
that  deeply  indents  the  coast,  still  bear  the  rounded  form 
originally  communicated  by  the  ice,  and  in  some  instances 
remind  the  traveller  of  huge  whales  heaving  their  smooth 
backs  over  the  brine.  Further,  we  not  unfrequently  see 
the  general  outline  of  the  mountains  affected ;  —  all  their 
peaks  and  precipices  curved  backwards  in  the  direction 
whence  the  glacier  descended,  and  more  angular  and  ab- 
rupt in  the  direction  towards  which  it  descended.  But 
it  is  in  those  groups  of  miniature  hills,  composed  of  glacial 
debris,  which  so  frequently  throng  the  openings  of  our 
Highland  valleys,  and  which  Burns  so  graphically  describes 
in  a  single  line  as 

"  Hillocks  dropt  in  Nature's  careless  haste," 

that  perhaps  the  most  pleasing  remains  of  our  ancient  gla- 
ciers are  to  be  found.  They  seem  to  be  modified  moraines, 
and  usually  affect  regular  forms,  resembling  in  some  in- 
stances the  roofs  of  houses,  and  in  some  the  bottoms  of 
upturned  ships;  and,  grouped  thick  together,  and  when 
umbrageous  with  the  graceful  birch,  or  waving  from  top  to 
base  with  the  light  fronds  of  the  lady-fern  and  the  bracken, 
they  often  compose  scenes  of  a  soft  and  yet  wild  loveli- 
ness, from  which  the  landscape  gardener  might  be  content 
to  borrow,  and  which  seem  to  have  impressed  in  a  very 

9* 


102  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

early  age  the  Celtic  imagination.  They  constitute  the 
fairy  Tomhans  of  Highland  mythology;  and  many  a  curi- 
ous legend  still  survives,  to  tell  of  benighted  travellers 
who,  on  one  certain  night  of  the  year,  of  ghostly  celebrity, 
have  seen  open  doors  in  their  green  sides,  whence  gleams 
of  dazzling  light  fell  on  the  thick  foliage  beyond,  and  have 
heard  voices  of  merriment  and  music  resounding  from 
within ;  or  who,  mayhap,  incautiously  entering,  have  lis- 
tened entranced  to  the  song,  or  stood  witnessing  the 
dance,  until,  returning  to  the  open  air,  they  have  found 
that  in  what  seemed  a  brief  half  hour  half  a  lifetime  had 
passed  away.  There  are  few  of  the  remoter  valleys  of  the 
Highlands  that  have  not  their  groups  of  fairy  Tomhans, 
—  memorials  of  the  age  of  ice. 

After  the  lapse  of  ages  —  but  who  can  declare  their 
number? — the  period  of  subsidence  represented  by  the 
boulder-clay  came  to  a  close,  and  a  period  of  elevation 
succeeded.  The  land  began  to  rise ;  and  there  is  consid- 
erable extent  of  superficial  deposits  in  Scotland  which  we 
owe  to  this  period  of  elevation.  It  is  the  main  object  of 
the  ingenious  work  of  Mr.  Robert  Chambers  on  Raised 
Beaches  to  show  that  there  were  pauses  in  the  elevating 
process,  during  which  the  lines  against  which  the  waves 
beat  were  hollowed  into  rectilinear  terraces,  much  broken, 
it  is  true,  and  widely  separated  in  their  parts,  but  that 
wonderfully  correspond  in  height  over  extensive  areas. 
It  is  of  course  to  be  expected,  that  the  higher  and  more 
ancient  the  beach  or  terrace,  the  more  must  it  be  worn 
down  by  the  action  of  the  elements,  especially  by  the 
descent  of  water-courses;  and  as  the  supposed  beaches 
intermediate  between  the  strongly-marked  ancient  coast 
line  which  I  have  already  described  at  such  length,  and 
certain  upper  lines  traceable  in  the  moorland  districts  of 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  103 

the  country,  occur  in  an  agricultural  region,  the  obliterat- 
ing wear  of  the  plough  has  been  added  to  that  of  the  cli- 
mate. After,  however,  all  fair  allowances  have  been  made, 
there  remain  great  difficulties  in  the  way.  I  have  been 
puzzled,  for  instance,  by  the  fact  that  Scotland  presents  us 
with  but  two  lines  of  water-worn  caves,  —  that  of  the 
present  coast  line,  and  that  of  the  old  line  immediately 
above  it.  Mr.  Chambers  enumerates  no  fewer  than  fifteen 
coast  lines  intermediate  between  the  old  coast  line  and  a 
coast  line  about  three  hundred  feet  over  it ;  and  in  the 
range  of  granitic  rocks  which  skirt  on  both  sides  the  en- 
trance of  the  Cromarty  Frith,  there  are  precipices  fully  a 
hundred  yards  in  height,  and  broadly  exposed  to  the 
stormy  north-east,  whose  bases  bear  their  double  lines  of 
deeply-hollowed  caverns.  But  they  exhibit  no  third,  or 
fourth,  or  fifth  line  of  caves.  Equally  impressible  through- 
out their  entire  extent  of  front,  and  with  their  inclosed 
masses  of  chloritic  schist  and  their  lines  of  fault  as  thickly 
set  in  their  brows  as  in  their  bases,  they  yet  present  no 
upper  stories  of  caves.  Had  the  sea  stood  at  the  fifteen 
intermediate  lines  for  periods  at  all  equal  in  duration  to 
those  in  which  it  has  stood  at  the  ancient  or  existing  coast 
line,  the  taller  precipices  of  the  Cromarty  Sutors  would 
present  their  seventeen  stories  of  excavations ;  and  exca- 
vations in  hard  granitic  gneiss  that  varied  from  twenty  to 
a  hundred  feet  in  depth  would  form  marks  at  least  as  in- 
delible as  parallel  roads  on  the  mountain  sides,  or  mounds 
of  gravel  and  debris  overtopping  inland  plains,  or  rising 
over  the  course  of  rivers.  The  want  of  lines  of  caves 
higher  than  those  of  the  ancient  coast  line  would  seem  to 
indicate,  that  though  the  sea  may  have  remained  long 
enough  at  the  various  upper  levels  to  leave  its  mark  on 
soft,  impressible  materials,  it  did  not  remain  long  enough 
to  excavate  into  caverns  the  solid  rocks. 


104  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

But  though  the  rise  of  the  land  may  have  been  compar- 
atively rapid,  there  was  quite  time  enough  during  the  term 
of  upheaval  for  a  series  of  processes  that  have  given  con- 
siderable variety  to  the  subsoils  of  our  country.  Had  the 
land  been  elevated  at  one  stride,  almost  the  only  subsoil 
of  what  we  recognize  as  the  agricultural  region  of  Scot- 
land would  have  been  the  boulder-clay,  here  and  there 
curiously  inlaid  with  irregular  patches  of  sand  and  gravel, 
which  occur  occasionally  throughout  its  entire  thickness, 
and  which  were  probably  deposited  in  the  forming  mass  by 
icebergs,  laden  at  the  bottom  with  the  sand  and  stones  of 
some  sea-beach,  on  which  they  had  lain  frozen  until  floated 
off,  with  their  burdens,  by  the  tide.  But  there  elapsed 
time  enough,  during  the  upheaval  of  the  land,  to  bring  its 
boulder-clay  deposits  piecemeal  under  the  action  of  the 
tides  and  waves;  and  hence,  apparently,  the  origin  of  not 
a  few  of  our  lighter  subsoils.  Wherever  the  waves  act  at 
the  present  time  upon  a  front  of  clay,  we  see  a  separation 
of  its  parts  taking  place.  Its  finer  argillaceous  particles 
are  floated  off  to  sea,  to  be  deposited  in  the  outer  depths ; 
its  arenaceous  particles  settle  into  sand-beds  a  little  adown 
the  beach ;  its  pebbles  and  boulders  form  a  surface  stratum 
of  stones  and  gravel,  extending  from  the  base  of  the  scaur 
to  where  the  surf  breaks  at  the  half-tide  line.  We  may 
see  a  similar  process  of  separation  going  on  in  ravines  of 
the  boulder-clay  swept  by  a  streamlet.  After  every  shower 
the  stream  comes  down  brown  and  turbid  with  the  more 
argillaceous  portions  of  the  deposit ;  accumulations  of 
sand  are  swept  to  the  gorge  of  the  ravine,  or  cast  down  in 
ripple-marked  patches  in  its  deeper  pools ;  beds  of  pebbles 
and  gravel  are  heaped  up  in  every  inflection  of  its  banks ; 
and  boulders  are  laid  bare  along  its  sides.  Now,  a  separa- 
tion by  a  sort  of  washing  process  of  an  analogous  charac- 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  105 

ter  seems  to  have  taken  place  in  the  materials  of  the  more 
exposed  portions  of  the  boulder-clay,  during  the  emergence 
of  the  land ;  and  hence,  apparently,  those  extensive  beds 
of  sand  and  gravel  which  in  so  many  parts  of  the  kingdom 
exist  in  relation  to  the  clay  as  a  superior  or  upper  subsoil ; 
hence,  too,  occasional  beds  of  a  purer  clay  than  that  be- 
neath, divested  of  a  considerable  portion  of  its  arenaceous 
components,  and  of  almost  all  its  pebbles  and  boulders. 
This  washed  clay  —  a  re-formation  of  the  boulder  deposit 

—  cast  down  mostly  in  insulated  beds  in  quiet  localities, 
where  the  absence  of  currents  suffered  the  purer  particles, 
held  in  suspension  by  the  water,  to  settle,  forms,  in  Scot- 
land at  least, — with,  of  course,  the  exception  of  the  ancient 
fire-clays  of  the  Coal  Measures,  —  the  true  brick  and  tile 
clays  of  the  agriculturist  and  architect.     There  are  exten- 
sive beds  of  this  washed  clay  within  a  short  distance  of 
Edinburgh ;  and  you  might  find  it  no  uninteresting  em- 
ployment to  compare  them,  in  a  leisure  hour,  with  the 
very  dissimilar  boulder-clays  over  which  they  rest.    Unlike 
the  latter,  they  are  finely  laminated :  in  the  brick  beds  of 
Portobello  I  have  seen  thin  streaks  of  coal-dust,  and  occa- 
sionally of  sand,  occurring  between  the  layers ;  but  it  is 
rare  indeed  to  find  in  them  a  single  pebble.    They  are  the 
washings,  in  all  likelihood,  of  those  boulder-clays  which 
rise  high  on  the  northern  flanks  of  the  Pentlands,  and 
occur  in  the  long,  flat  valley  along  which  the  Edinburgh 
and  Glasgow  Railway  runs,  —  washings  detached  by  the 
waves  when  the  land  was  rising,  and  which,  carried  towards 
the  east  by  the  westward  current,  were  quietly  deposited 
in  the  lee  of  Arthur  Seat  and  the  neighboring  eminences, 

—  at  that  time  a  small  group  of  islands.     The  only  shells 
I  ever  detected  in  the  brick-clay  of  Scotland  occurred  in  a 
deposit  in  the  neighborhood  of  St.  Andrew's,  of  appar- 


106  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

ently  the  same  age  as  the  beds  at  Portobello.1  They  were 
in  a  bad  state  of  keeping ;  but  I  succeeded  in  identifying 
one  of  the  number  as  a  deep-sea  Balanus,  still  thrown 
ashore  in  considerable  quantity  among  the  rocks  to  the 
south  of  St.  Andrew's.  In  this  St.  Andrew's  deposit,  too, 
I  found  the  most  modern  nodules  I  have  yet  seen  in  Scot- 
land, for  they  had  evidently  been  hardened  into  stone  dur- 
ing the  recent  period;  but,  though  I  laid  them  open  by 
scores,  I  failed  to  detect  in  them  anything  organic.  Sim- 
ilar nodules  of  the  Drift  period,  not  unfrequent  in  Canada 
and  the  United  States,  are  remarkable  for  occasionally 
containing  the  only  ichthyolite  found  by  Agassiz  among 
seventeen  hundred  species,  which  still  continues  to  live, 
and  that  can  be  exhibited,  in  consequence,  in  duplicate 
specimens,  —  the  one  fit  for  the  table  in  the  character  of  a 
palatable  viand,  —  the  other  for  the  shelves  of  a  geological 
museum  in  the  character  of  a  curious  ichthyolite.  It  is 
the  MaJlotus  villosus,  or  Capelan  (for  such  is  its  market- 
name),  a  little  fish  of  the  arctic  and  semi-arctic  seas.  "  The 
Mallotus  is  abundant,"  says  Mr.  James  Wilson,  in  his  ad- 
mirable "  Treatise  on  Fishes,"  "  in  the  arctic  seas,  where 
it  is  taken  in  immense  profusion  when  approaching  the 
coasts  to  spawn,  and  is  used  as  the  principal  bait  for  cod. 
A  few  are  cured  and  brought  to  this  country  in  barrels, 
where  they  are  sold,  and  used  as  a  relish  by  the  curious  in 
wines." 

Let  me  next  call  your  attention  to  the  importance,  in  an 
economic  point  of  view,  of  the  great  geologic  events  which 
gave  to  our  country  its  subsoils,  more  especially  the  boul- 
der-clay. This  deposit  varies  in  value,  according  to  the 
nature  of  the  rocks  out  of  which  it  was  formed ;  but  it  is, 
even  where  least  fertile,  a  better  subsoil  than  the  rock 

1  See  Note  at  the  end  of  the  Lectures. 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  107 

itself  would  have  been ;  and  in  many  a  district  it  furnishes 
our  heaviest  wheat  soils.  To  the  sand  and  gravel  formed 
out  of  it,  and  spread  partially  over  it,  we  owe  a  class  of 
soils  generally  light,  but  kindly ;  and  the  brick  clays  are 
not  only  of  considerable  value  in  themselves,  but  of  such 
excellence  as  a  subsoil,  that  the  land  which  overlies  them 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Edinburgh  still  lets  at  from  four 
to  five  pounds  per  acre.  I  suspect  that,  in  order  to  be 
fully  able  to  estimate  the  value  of  a  subsoil,  one  would 
need  to  remove  to  those  rocky  lands  of  the  south  that 
seeni  doomed  to  hopeless  barrenness  for  want  of  one.  It 
is  but  a  tedious  process  through  which  the  minute  lichen 
or  dwarfish  moss,  settling  on  a  surface  of  naked  stone, 
forms,  in  the  course  of  ages,  a  soil  for  plants  of  greater 
bulk  and  a  higher  order ;  and  had  Scotland  been  left  to 
the  exclusive  operation  of  this  slow  agent,  it  would  be  still 
a  rocky  desert,  with  perhaps  here  and  there  a  strip  of  allu- 
vial meadow  by  the  side  of  a  stream,  and  here  and  there 
an  insulated  patch  of  mossy  soil  among  the  hollows  of  the 
crags ;  but,  though  it  might  possess  its  few  gardens  for  the 
spade,  it  would  have  no  fields  for  the  plough.  We  owe 
our  arable  land  to  that  geologic  agent  which,  grinding 
down,  as  in  a  mill,  the  upper  layers  of  the  surface  rocks  of 
the  kingdom,  and  then  spreading  over  the  eroded  strata 
their  own  debris,  formed  the  general  basis  in  which  the 
first  vegetation  took  root,  and  in  the  course  of  years  com- 
posed the  vegetable  mould.  A  foundering  land  under  a 
severe  sky,  beaten  by  tempests  and  lashed  by  tides,  with 
glaciers  half  choking  up  its  cheerless  valleys,  and  with 
countless  icebergs  brushing  its  coasts  and  grating  over  its 
shallows,  would  have  seemed  a  melancholy  and  hopeless 
object  to  human  eye,  had  there  been  human  eyes  to  look 
upon  it  at  the  time ;  and  yet  such  seem  to  have  been  the 


108  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

circumstances  in  which  our  country  was  placed  by  Him 
who,  to  "perform  his  wonders," 

"  Plants  his  footsteps  in  the  sea, 
And  rides  upon  the  storm," 

in  order  that  at  the  appointed  period  it  might,  according 
to  the  poet,  be  a  land 

"  Made  blithe  by  plough  and  harrow." 

From  the  boulder-clay  there  is  a  natural  transition  to  the 
boulders  themselves,  from  which  the  deposit  derives  its 
name.  These  remarkable  travelled  stones  seem,  from  the 
old  traditions  connected  with  some  of  them,  to  have  awak- 
ened attention  and  excited  wonder  at  an  early  period,  long 
'  ieology  was  known  as  a  science;  nor  are  they  without 
their  share  of  picturesqueness  in  certain  situations.  You 
will  perhaps  remember  how  frequently,  and  with  what 
variety  of  aspect,  Bewick,  the  greatest  of  wood  engravers, 
used  to  introduce  them  into  the  backgrounds  of  his  vig- 
nettes. "  A  rural  scene  is  never  perfect,"  says  Shenstone,  a 
poet  of  no  very  large  calibre,  but  the  greatest  of  landscape 
gardeners, "  without  the  addition  of  some  kind  of  building : 
I  have,  however,  known,"  he  adds,  "  a  scaur  of  rock  in 
great  measure  supplying  the  deficiency."  And  the  justice 
of  the  poet's  canon  may  be  often  seen  exemplified  in  those 
more  recluse  districts  of  the  country  which  border  on  the 
Highlands,  and  where  a  huge  rock-like  boulder,  roughened 
by  mosses  and  lichens,  may  be  seen  giving  animation  and 
cheerfulness  to  the  wild  solitude  of  a  deep  forest-glade,  or 
to  some  bosky  inflection  of  bank  waving  with  birch  and 
ha/.d  on  the  side  of  some  lonely  tarn  or  haunted  streamlet. 
r'.\cn  on  a  dark,  sterile  moor,  where  the  pale  lichen  springs 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  109 

up  among  the  stunted  heath,  and  the  hairy  club-moss  goes 
creeping  among  the  stones,  some  vast  boulder,  rising  gray 
amid  the  waste,  gives  to  the  fatigued  eye  a  reposing  point, 
on  which  it  can  rest  for  a  time,  and  then  let  itself  out  on 
the.  expanse  around.  Boulder-stones  are  stil!  very  abun- 
dant in  Scotland,  though  for  the  last  century  they  have 
been  gradually  disappearing  from  the  more  cultivated 
tracts  where  there  were  fences  or  farm  steadings  to  be 
built,  or  where  they  obstructed  the  course  of  the  plough. 
We  find  them  occurring  in  every  conceivable  situation : 
high  on  hill-sides,  where  the  shepherd  crouches  beside  them 
for  shelter  in  a  shower ;  deep  in  the  open  sea,  where  they 
entangle  the  nets  of  the  fisherman  on  his  fishing  banks ;  on 
inland  moors,  where  in  some  remote  age  they  were  labori- 
ously rolled  together  to  form  the  Druidical  circle  or  Pict's 
House ;  or  on  the  margin  of  the  coast,  where  they  had  been 
piled  over  one  another  at  a  later  time,  as  protecting  bul- 
warks against  the  waves.  They  are  no  longer  to  be  seen  in 
this  neighborhood  in  what  we  may  term  the  agricultural 
region;  but  they  still  occur  in  great  numbers  atong  the 
const,  within  the  belt  that  intervenes  between  high  and  low 
water,  and  on  an  upper  moorland  zone  over  which  the 
plough  has  not  yet  passed.  Mr.  Charles  M'Laren  describes, 
in  his  admirable  little  work  on  "  The  Geology  of  Fife  and 
the  Lothians,"  a  boulder  of  mica  schist  weighing  from  eight 
to  ten  tons,  which  rests,  among  many  others,  on  one  of  the 
Pentland  Hills,  and  which  derives  an  interest  from  the  fact 
that,  as  shown  by  the  quality  of  the  rock,  the  nearest  point 
from  which  it  could  have  come  is  at  least  fifty  miles  away. 
A  well-known  greenstone  boulder  of  still  larger  size  may  be 
seen  at  the  line  of  half-ebb,  about  half-way  between  Leith 
and  Portobello.  But  though  about  ten  feet  in  height,  it  is 
a  small  stone,  compared  with  others  of  its  class  both  in  this 

10 


110  Li;<TUli:s    <>X    GEOLOGY. 

country  and  the  Continent.  The  rock,  as  it  is  well  termed 
(tor  it  is  a  mass  of  granite  weighing  fifteen  hundred  tons), 
on  which  the  colossal  statue  of  Peter  the  Great  at  St. 
Petersburg  is  plaivd,  is  a  travelled  boulder,  which  was 
found  dissociated  from  every  other  stone  of  its  kind  in- the 
mi«  Idle  of  a  morass;  and  Sir  Roderick  Murchison  describes, 
in  one  of  his  papers  on  the  Northern  Drift,  a  Scandinavian 
boulder  thirty  feet  in  height  by  one  hundred  and  forty  in 
circumference.  Most,  if  not  all  the  boulders  which  we  find 
in  this  part  of  the  country  on  the  lower  zone,  have  been 
washed  out  of  the  boulder-clay.  Wherever  we  find  a 
group  of  boulders  on  the  portion  of  sea-bottom  uncovered 
by  the  ebb,  we  have  but  to  look  at  the  line  where  the  surf 
Itivuks  when  the  sea  is  at  full,  and  there  we  find  the  clay 
itM-lf,  with  its  half-uncovered  boulders  projecting  from  its 
y'u-lding  sides,  apparently  as  freshly  grooved  and  scratched 
as  if  the  transporting  iceberg  had  been  at  work  upon  them 
but  yesterday. 

I  must  again  adduce  the  evidence  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell, 
to  show  that  masses  of  this  character  are  frequently  ice- 
borne.  "  In  the  river  St.  Lawrence,"  we  find  him  stating  in 
his  "  Elements,"  **  the  loose  ice  accumulates  on  the  shoals 
during  the  winter,  at  which  season  the  water  is  low.  The 
separate  fragments  of  ice  are  readily  frozen  together  in  a 
climate  where  the  temperature  is  sometimes  thirty  degrees 
below  zero,  and  boulders  become  entangled  with  them ;  so 
that  in  spring,  when  the  river  rises  on  the  melting  of  the 
snow,  the  ice  is  floated  ofij  frequently  conveying  the  bould- 
ers to  great  distances.  A  single  block  of  granite  fifteen 
ti « t  long  by  ten  feet  both  in  breadth  and  height,  and  which 
could  not  contain  less  than  fifteen  hundred  cubic  feet  of 
atone,  was  in  this  way  moved  down  the  river  several  hun- 
dred yards,  during  the  late  survey  in  1837.  Heavy  anchors 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  Ill 

of  ships  lying  on  the  shore  have  in  like  manner  been  closed 
in  and  removed.  In  October  1808  wooden  stakes  were 
driven  several  feet  into  the  ground  at  one  part  of  the  banks 
of  the  St.  Lawrence  at  high-water  mark,  and  over  them 
were  piled  many  boulders  as  large  as  the  united  force  of  six 
men  could  roll.  The  year  after,  all  the  boulders  had  dis- 
appeared, and  others  had  arrived,  and  the  stakes  had  been 
drawn  out  and  carried  away  by  the  ice." 

Our  Scottish  boulders  —  though  in  many  instances  im- 
mediately associated,  as  in  this  neighborhood,  with  the 
boulder-clay,  and  in  many  others,  as  in  our  moorland  dis- 
tricts, with  the  bare  rock  —  occur  in  some  cases  associated 
with  the  superficial  sands  and  gravels,  and  rest  upon  or 
over  these.  And  in  these  last  instances  they  must  have 
been  the  subjects  of  a  course  of  ice-borne  voyagings  subse- 
quent to  the  earlier  course,  and  when  the  land  was  rising. 
Even  during  the  last  sixty  years,  though  our  winters  are 
now  far  from  severe,  there  have  been  instances  in  Scotland 
of  the  transport  of  huge  stones  by  the  agency  of  ice ;  and 
to  two  of  these,  as  of  a  character  suited  to  throw  some 
light  on  the  boulder  voyagings  of  the  remote  past,  I  must 
be  permitted  to  refer. 

Some  of  my  audience  may  have  heard  of  a  boulder  well 
known  on  both  sides  of  the  Moray  Frith  as  the  "  Travelled 
Stone  of  Petty,"  —  a  district  which  includes  the  Moor  of 
Culloden,  and  at  whose  parish  church  Hector  Boece  saw 
the  gigantic  bones  of  the  colossal  Little  John.  The  Clack 
dim  n-Aban,  or  black  stone  of  the  white  bog,  — for  such  is 
the  graphically  descriptive  Gaelic  name  of  the  moss, — 
measures  about  six  feet  in  height  by  from  six  to  seven  feet 
in  breadth  and  thickness,  and  served,  up  to  the  19th  of 
February  1799,  as  a  march-stone  between  the  properties  of 
Castle  Stuart  and  Culloden.  It  lay  just  within  flood- 


1!J  LHCTUKES    OX    GKOI/xiY. 

mark,  near  where  a  little  stream  empties  itself  into  a  shallow 
sandy  bay.  There  had  been  a  severe,  long-continued  frost 
throughout  the  early  part  of  the  month;  and  the  upper 
portions  of  the  bay  had  acquired,  mainly  through  the 
agency  of  the  streamlet,  a  continuous  covering  of  ice,  that 
had  attained,  round  the  base  of  the  stone,  which  it  clasped 
a  thickness  of  eighteen  inches.  On  the  night  of  the 
I'.ith  the  tide  rose  unusually  high  on  the  beach,  and  there 
broke  out  a  violent  hurricane  from  the  east-south-east,  ac- 
companied by  a  snow-storm.  There  is  a  meal  mill  in  the 
immediate  neighborhood  of  the  stone ;  and  when  the  old 
miller  —  as  he  related  the  story  to  the  late  Sir  Thomas  Dick 
Lander  —  got  up  on  the  morning  of  the  20th,  so  violent 
was  the  storm,  and  so  huge  the  snow-wreaths  that  blocked 
up  every  window  and  door,  and  rose  over  the  eaves,  that  he 
could  hardly  make  his  way  to  his  barns,  —  a  journey  of  but 
a  few  yards ;  and  in  returning  again  from  them  to  his  dwell- 
ing, he  narrowly  escaped  losing  himself  in  the  drift.  In 
looking  towards  the  bay,  in  one  of  the  pauses  of  the  storm, 
he  could  scarce  credit  his  eyesight :  the  immense  Clach  du 
n-Aban  had  disappeared,  —  vanished,  —  gone  clean  off  the 
ground ;  and  he  called  to  his  wife  in  astonishment  and 
alarm,  that  the  "meikle  stane  was  awa."  The  honest 
woman  looked  out,  and  then  rubbed  her  eyes,  as  if  to  verify 
their  evidence ;  but  the  fact  was  unquestionable,  —  the 
u  meikle  stane  "  certainly  "  was  awa ; "  and  there  remained 
but  a  hollow  pit  in  the  sand,  with  a  long,  shallow  furrow, 
stretching  from  the  pit  outwards  to  where  the  snow  rhime 
closed  thick  over  the  sea,  to  mark  where  it  had  been. 
When,  however,  the  weather  cleared  up,  the  stone  again 
lu came  vi>il»le,  lying  out  in  the  sands  uncovered  by  the  ebb, 
seven  hundred  and  eighty  feet  from  its  former  position.  In 
the  evening  of  the  day,  the  neighbors  flocked  out  by 


LECTUKES  ON  GEOLOGY.  113 

scores  to  examine  the  scene  of  so  extraordinary  a  prodigy. 
Where  the  stone  had  lain  they  found  but  the  deep  dent 
connected  by  the  furrow  which  lay  athwart  the  bay  in  the 
line  of  the  hurricane,  with  the  stone  itself,  around  the  base 
of  which  there  still  projected  a  thick  cornice  of  ice.  In  its 
new  position  the  stone  still  lies ;  and  only  a  few  years  ago 
—  mayhap,  still  —  a  wooden  post  which  marked  the  point 
where  the  two  contiguous  properties  met,  marked  also  the 
spot  from  which,  after  a  rest  of  ages,  it  had  set  out  on  its 
short  voyage. 

My  other  case  of  boulder  travelling  —  in  some  respects 
a  more  curious  case  than  the  one  related  —  occurred  early 
in  the  present  century  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Sutherland- 
shire.  Near  the  small  hamlet  of  Torribal,  in  the  upper  part 
of  Loch  Fleet,  there  stood,  about  fifty  years  ago,  a  rude 
obelisk  of  undressed  stone,  generally  regarded  as  Danish, 
which,  though  more  ancient  than  authentic  history,  or  even 
tradition,  in  the  district,  was  less  so  than  the  old  coast  line, 
as  it  had  been  evidently  erected,  subsequent  to  the  last 
change  of  level,  on  the  flat  marginal  strip  which  intervenes 
between  the  old  line  and  the  sea.  It  rose  in  the  middle  of 
a  swampy  hollow,  which  protracted  rains  sometimes  con- 
verted into  a  strip  of  water,  and  which  was  sometimes 
swept  by  the  overflowings  of  the  neighboring  river.  On 
the  eve  of  the  incident  which  proved  the  terminating  one 
in  its  history,  the  hollow,  previously  filled  with  rain-water, 
had  been  frozen  to  the  bottom  by  a  continued  frost,  which 
was,  however,  on  the  eve  of  breaking  up  ;  and  a  dense  fog 
lay  thick  in  the  valley,  when  a  benighted  Highlander,  re- 
turning tipsy  from  a  market  by  the  light  of  the  moon,  came 
staggering  in  the  direction  of  the  standing  stone,  and  in  a 
drunken  frolic  set  his  bonnet  on  the  top  of  it ;  and  then 
wandering  off  into  the  mist,  he  lost  sight  of  both  stone  and 

10* 


114  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

bonnet,  and,  failing  to  regain  them,  lie  bad  to  return  bare- 
headed to  his  home.  The  thaw  came  on ;  the  river  rose 
<.\  i  r  its  banks;  the  ice-cake  around  the  obelisk  floated  high 
above  the  level,  wrenching  up  the  obelisk  along  with  it,  as 
the  ice  of  the  St.  Lawrence  wrenched  up  the  stakes  de- 
scribed by  Sir  Charles  Lyell ;  and  both  ice-cake  and  obelisk 
floated  down  the  loch  to  the  sea.  As  the  morning  broke — a 
fierce  morning  of  flood  and  tempest  —  they  were  seen  pass- 
ing what  some  forty  years  ago  was  known  as  the  Little 
Ferry  ;  and  the  alarm  went  abroad  along  the  shores  on  both 
.-ides,  that  there  was  a  man  standing  in  the  middle  of  the 
Loch  on  the  floating  ice,  and  in  course  of  being  swept  out 
to  the  ocean.  Poor  man!  he  had  been  crossing  the  river, 
it  was  interred,  when  the  ice  broke  up ;  and  though  the  en- 
terprise was  a  somewhat  perilous  one,  for  the  ice  fragments 
were  rushing  furiously  along  on  the  wild  tides  of  the  loch, 
maddened  by  the  inundation,  a  boat,  double  manned,  shot 
out  from  the  shore  to  the  rescue,  and  soon  neared  the  drift- 
ing ice-floe.  It  was  ultimately  seen,  however,  that  the 
supposed  man  was  but  a  Danish  obelisk,  bearing  on  its  head 
a  m\>terious  bonnet;  and  bonnet  and  obelisk  were  left  to 
find  their  way  to  the  German  Ocean,  in  which  it  is  proba- 
ble they  now  both  lie.  These  modern  instances  of  boulder 
travelling  may  serve  to  show  how  huge  stones  originally 
associated  with  the  boulder-clay  may  have  come  to  rest 
on  the  arenaceous  or  gravelly  deposits  which  overlie  it. 
Through  the  second  voyage  of  the  Petty  boulder,  it  was 
deposited  on  a  recently  formed  bed  of  sand ;  and  the  stand- 
ing-stone of  Torribal  may  now  rest  on  sea-shells  that  were 
living  half  a  century  ago. 

It  is  held  by  geologists  of  high  standing,  that  after  the 
period  of  submergence  represented  by  the  boulder-clays  of 
our  country,  the  British  islands  were  elevated  to  such  a 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  115 

* 

height  over  the  sea-level,  that  their  distinctive  character  as 
islands  was  lost,  and  the  area  which  they  occupy  united  to 
the  main  land  in  the  character  of  a  western  prolongation 
of  the  great  European  continent.  It  was  at  this  period, 
says  Professor  Edward  Forbes,  that  Britain  and  Ireland 
received,  over  the  upraised  bed  of  the  German  Ocean,  their 
Germanic  flora,  —  the  last  acquired  of  the  five  floras  which 
compose  their  vegetation.  The  evidence  on  the  point, 
however,  still  seems  somewhat  meagre.  I  can  have  no 
doubt  that  the  land  stood  considerably  higher  during  this 
Post-Tertiary  period  than  it  does  now.  As  shown  by  the 
dressed  surfaces  and  rounded  forms  of  many  of  the  smaller 
islets  of  the  north-western  coasts  of  Scotland,  and  the 
markings  at  the  bottom  of  its  lochs  and  estuaries,  and  on 
the  rocks  along  their  shores,  the  latter  glaciers  must  have 
descended  from  the  central  hills  of  the  country  far  below 
the  present  sea-level ;  and  we  find  some  of  the  transverse 
moraines  which  they  ploughed  up  before  them  in  their 
descent  existing  as  gravelly  spits,  that  rise  amid  the  waves, 
in  the  middle  of  long  friths  or  at  the  entrance  of  deep  bays. 
I  have  seen,  too,  on  rocky  coasts,  considerably  below  the 
tide-line  at  flood,  a  sort  of  recent  breccia  formed  by  cal- 
careous springs,  which,  as  the  stalagmitical  matter  could 
not  have  been  deposited  in  places  exposed  to  the  diurnal 
washings  of  the  sea,  indicated  a  higher  level  of  the  land 
than  now,  at  the  time  of  its  formation ;  and  the  submerged 
mosses  of  both  Britain  and  Ireland  —  mosses  now  existing 
in  many  localities  far  below  the  fall  of  the  tide — bear  evi- 
dence, where  not  more  ancient  than  the  boulder-clay,  in  the 
same  line.  But  on  this  obscure  passage  in  the  geological 
history  of  our  country  I  am  unable,  from  at  least  actual 
observation,  to  say  aught  more :  my  few  facts  lie  in  the 
direction  of  Professor  Forbes's  theory,  but  they  accompany 


116  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

» 

it  only  a  short  way.  There  is  a  wide  gap  still  unfilled.  I 
may  In-  permitted  to  remind  you,  that  it  is  lield  by  the 
Professor  —  one  of  the  most  accomplished  of  our  geolo- 
gists—  that  of  the  five  British  floras,  we  have  two  in 
Scotland,  —  the  Germanic  flora,  and  the  semi-arctic  or 
Scandinavian  flora;  that  these  were  introduced  into  the 
country  at  different  periods ;  and  that  while  the  Germanic 
flora  dates  from  the  times  of  the  Post-Tertiary  elevation 
of  the  land,  the  more  ancient  of  the  two  —  the  semi-arctic 
or  Scandinavian  —  dates  from  the  preceding  times  of  the 
boulder-clay.  Nor  does  it  appear  in  any  degree  more  im- 
probable that  we  should  have  the  descendants  of  the  plants 
of  even  the  remoter  period  still  vital  on  our  hill-tops,  than 
that  we  should  have  the  descendants  of  some  of  its  animals 
still  living  in  our  seas.  It  seems  at  first  a  curious  problem, 
ditlicult  of  solution,  that  widely  separated  mountain  sum- 
mits should  possess  the  same  alpine  plants,  —  that  the  sum- 
mits of  Ben  Wyvis  and  Ben  Lomond,  for  instance,  or  of 
r.«  11  Nevis  and  Ben  Muich  Dhui,  should  have  their  species 
in  common,  while  not  a  trace  of  them  appears  on  the  lower 
elevations  between.  But  it  simplifies  the  case  to  conceive 
of  these  alpine  plants  as  the  vegetable  aborigines  of  the 
country,  compelled  by  climatal  invasion  to  shelter  in  its 
last  bleak  retreats,  where  the  winter  snows  linger  unwasted 
till  midsummer,  and  the  breeze  is  always  laden  with  the 
chills  of  the  old  glacial  period.  They  compose  the  Celtic 
portion  of  the  Scottish  flora,  cooped  up  in  their  mountain 
recesses  by  the  encroachments  of  those  Gennanic  races 
of  the  plant  family  that  flourish,  in  the  altered  atmos- 
I -In -re,  or  the  more  genial  plains  of  the  country,  or  on  the 
sunny  slopes  of  its  lower  hills.  That  language  of  flowers 
in  which  tin-  ladies  of  Mohammedan  countries  have  learned 
to  converse  is  not  unappropriated)-  employed  in  giving 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  117 

expression  to  the  various  modes  of  a  passion  scarce  less 
evanescent  than  the  flowers  themselves.  But  is  it  not 
passing  strange,  that  we  of  Scotland  should  be  called  on 
to  recognize  in  the  transitory  flowers  of  our  sheltered 
low-lying  plains  and  valleys,  and  of  our  high,  bleak  moors 
and  exposed  mountain  summits,  the  records  of  an  antiq- 
uity so  remote,  that  the  stories  told  by  the  half-effaced 
hieroglyphics  of  Nineveh  and  of  Egypt  are  of  yesterday  in 
comparison  ? 

Here  the  exhibition  of  our  facts  illustrative  of  the  Pleis- 
tocene and  Post-Tertiary  periods  in  Scotland  properly 
ends.  The  existing  evidence  has  been  taken,  though,  of 
course,  briefly  and  imperfectly,  the  extent  and  multiplicity 
of  the  subject  considered  ;  and,  the  record  closed,  a  formal 
summary  of  the  conclusions  founded  upon  it  should  now 
terminate  our  history.  Permit  me,  however,  to  present 
you,  in  conclusion,  not  with  the  formal  summary,  but  a 
somewhat  extended  picture,  of  the  whole,  exhibited,  pan- 
orama-like, as  a  series  of  scenes.  The  fine  passage  in  the 
Autumn  of  Thomson,  in  which  the  poet  lays  all  Scotland 
at  once  upon  the  canvas,  and  surveys  it  at  a  glance,  must 
be  familiar  to  you  all : 

"  Here  awhile  the  Mase, 

High  hovering  o'er  the  broad  cerulean  scene,  • 

Sees  Caledonia  in  romantic  view; 
Her  airy  mountains,  from  the  waving  main, 
Invested  with  a  keen  diffusive  sky, 
Breathing  the  soul  acute ;  her  forests  huge, 
Incult,  robust,  and  tall,  by  Nature's  hand 
•  Planted  of  old;  her  azure  lakes  between, 
Poured  out  extensive,  and  of  watery  wealth 
Full;  winding  deep  and  green,  her  fertile  vales, 
With  many  a  cool,  translucent,  brimming  flood 
"NVash'd  lovely,  from  the  Tweed  (pure  parent  stream, 
Whose  pastoral  banks  first  heard  my  Doric  reed, 


118  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

With,  sylvan  .Ted,  thy  tributary  brook), 

To  where  the  North's  inflated  tempest  foams 

O'er  Orcas  or  Bctubium's  highest  peak." 

Let  us  in  like  manner  attempt  calling  up  the  features  of 
our  country  in  one  continuous  landscape,  as  they  appeared 
at  the  commencement  of  the  glacial  period,  just  as  the 
paroxysm  of  depression  had  come  on,  and  bold  headland 
and  steep  iron-bound  islet  had  begun  slowly  to  settle  into 
the  sea. 

The  general  outline  is  that  of  Scotland,  though  harsher 
and  more  rugged  than  now,  for  it  lacks  the  softening  in- 
tegument of  the  subsoils.  Yonder  are  the  Grampians,  and 
yonder  the  Cheviots,  and,  deeply  indenting  the  shores,  yon- 
der are  the  well-known  estuaries  and  bays,  —  the  friths  of 
Forth,  Tay,  and  Moray,  and  the  long  withdrawing  lakes, 
Loch  Katrine,  and  Loch  Awe,  and  Loch  Maree,  and  the 
far-gleaming  waters  of  the  deep  Caledonian  Valley,  the 
Ness,  and  the  Oich,  and  the  Lochy.  But  though  the  sum- 
mer sun  looks  down  upon  the  scene,  the  snow-line  de- 
scends beneath  the  top  of  even  our  second-class  mountains; 
and  the  tall,  beetling  Ben  Nevis,  and  graceful  Ben  Lomond, 
and  the  broad-based  Ben  Muich  Dhui,  glitter  in  the  sun- 
shine, in  their  coats  of  dazzling  white,  from  their  summits 
half-way  down  to  their  bases.  There  are  extended  forests 
of  the  native  fir  on  the  lower  plains,  mingled  with  the  slim- 
mer forms  and  more  richly-tinted  foliage  of  the  spruce 
pine.  On  the  upper  grounds,  thickets  of  stunted  willows 
ami  straggling  belts  of  diminutive  birches  skirt  the  ravines 
and  water-courses,  and  yellow  mosses  and  gray  lichens 
form  the  staple  covering  of  the  humbler  hill-sides  and  the 
moors.  But  the  distinctive  feature  of  the  country  is  its 
glaciers.  Fed  by  the  perpetual  snows  of  the  upper  heights, 
the  deeper  valleys  among  the  mountains  have  their  rigid 


LECTUIKS    ON    GEOLOGY.  119 

ice-rivers,  that  in  the  narrower  friths  and  lochs  of  the 
western  and  northern  coasts  shoot  far  out,  mole-like,  into 
the  tide.  And,  lo !  along  the  shores,  in  sounds  and  bays 
never  yet  ploughed  by  the  keel  of  voyager,  vast  groups 
of  icebergs,  that  gleam  white  to  the  sun,  like  the  sails  of 
distant  fleets,  He  moveless  in  the  calm,  or  drift  slowly  along 
in  rippling  tideways.  Nor  is  the  land  without  its  inhabi- 
tants, though  man  has  not  yet  appeared.  The  colossal 
elephant,  not  naked  and  dingy  of  coat,  like  his  congener  of 
the  tropics,  but  shaggy,  with  long  red  hair,  browses  among 
the  woods.  There  is  a  stronsc-limbed  rhinoceros  wallow- 

o 

ing  in  yonder  swamp,  and  a  herd  of  reindeer  cropping  the 
moss  high  on  the  hill-side  beyond.  The  morse  is  basking 
on  that  half-tide  skerry;  and  a  wolf,  swept  seawards  by 
the  current,  howls  loud  in  terror  from  yonder  drifting  ice- 
floe. We  have  looked  abroad  on  our  future  country  in  the 
period  of  the  first  local  glaciers,  ere  the  submergence  of 
the  land. 

Ages  pass,  and  usher  in  the  succeeding  period  of  the 
boulder-clay.  The  prospect,  no  longer  that  of  a  continu- 
ous land,  presents  us  with  a  wintry  archipelago  of  islands, 
broken  into  thre/3  groups  by  two  deep  ocean-sounds,  — 
the  ocean-sound  of  the  great  Caledonian  Valley,  and  that 
of  the  broader  but  shallower  valley  which  stretches  across 
the  island  from  the  Clyde  to  the  Forth.  We  stand  full  in 
front  of  one  of  these  vast  ocean-rivers,  —  the  southern  one. 
There  are  snow-enwrapped  islets  on  either  side.  Can  yon- 
der thickly-set  cluster  be  the  half-submerged  Pentlands? 
and  yonder  pair  of  islets,  connected  by  a  low,  flat  neck,  the 
eastern  and  western  Lomonds  ?  and  yonder  half-tide  rock, 
blackened  with  algas,  and  around  which  a  shoal  of  porpoises 
are  gamboling,  the  summit  of  Arthur  Seat  ?  The  wide 
sound,  now  a  rich  agricultural  valley,  is  here  studded  by 


1^0  LECTURES   OX    GEOLOGY. 

its  fleets  of  tall  icebergs,  —  there  cumbered  by  its  level 
fields  of  drift  ice.  Nature  sports  wantonly  amid  every 
variety  of  form  ;  and  the  motion  of  the  great  floating 
masses,  cast  into  shapes  with  which  we  associate  moveless 
solidity,  adds  to  the  magical  effect  of  the  scene.  Here  a 
flat-roofed  temple,  surrounded  by  colonnades  of  hoar  and 
wasted  columns,  comes  drifting  past ;  there  a  cathedral, 
furnished  with  towers  and  spire,  strikes  heavily  against  the 
rocky  bottom,  many  fathoms  beneath,  and  its  nodding  pin- 
nacles stoop  at  every  blow.  Yonder,  already  fast  aground, 
there  rests  a  ponderous  castle,  with  its  curtained  towers, 
its  arched  gateway,  and  its  multitudinous  turrets,  reflected 
on  the  calm  surface  beneath ;  and  pyramids  and  obelisks, 
buttressed  ramparts,  and  embrazured  watch-towers,  with 
shapes  still  more  fantastic,  —  those  of  ships,  and  trees,  and 
brute  and  human  forms,  —  crowd  the  retiring  vista  beyond. 
There  is  a  scarce  less  marked  variety  of  color.  The  in- 
tense white  of  the  field-ice,  thinly  covered  with  snow,  and 
glittering  without  shade  in  the  declining  sun,  dazzles  the 
eye.  The  taller  icebergs  gleam  in  hues  of  more  softened 
radiance,  —  here  of  an  emerald  green,  there  of  a  sapphire 
blue,  yonder  of  a  paly  marble  gray  ;  the  light,  polarized 
by  a  thousand  cross  reflections,  sports  amid  the  planes  and 
facets,  the  fissures  and  pinnacles,  in  all  the  rainbow  gor- 
geousness  of  the  prismatic  hues.  And  bright  over  all  rise 
on  the  distant  horizon  the  detached  mountain-tops,  now 
catching  a  flush  of  crimson  and  gold  from  the  setting  lumi- 
navy.  But  the  sun  sinks,  and  the  clouds  gather,  and  the 
night  comes  on  black  with  tempest ;  and  the  grounded 
ni;i»i's,  moved  by  the  violence  of  the  aroused  winds,  grate 
heavily  along  the  bottom;  and  while  the  whole  heavens 
are  foul  with  sleet  and  snow-rack,  and  the  driving  masses 
clash  in  rude  collision,  till  all  beneath  is  one  wide  stun- 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  121 

ning  roar,  the  tortured  sea  boils  and  dashes  around  them, 
turbid  with  the  comminuted  debris  of  the  fretted  rocks 
below. 

The  vision  belongs  to  an  early  age-of  the  boulder-clay : 
it  changes  to  a  later  time ;  and  the  same  sea  spreads  out 
as  before,  laden  by  what  seem  the  same  drifting  ice-floes. 
But  the  lower  hills,  buried  in  the  profound  depths  of  ocean, 
are  no  longer  visible ;  the  Lainmermuirs  have  disappeared ; 
and  the  slopes  of  Braid  and  Duddingstone,  with 

"  North  Berwick  Law,  with  cone  of  green, 
And  Bass  amid  the  waters; " 

and  we  can  determine  their  place  by  but  the  huger  ice- 
bergs that  lie  stranded  and  motionless  on  their  peaks  ; 
while  the  lesser  masses  drift  on  to  the  east.  Moons  wax 
and  wane,  and  tides  rise  and  fall ;  and  still  the  deep  cur- 
rent of  the  gulf  stream  flows  ever  from  the  west,  traversing 
the  wide  Atlantic,  like  some  vast  river  winding  through 
an  enormous  extent  of  meadow ;  and,  in  eddying  over  the 
submerged  land,  it  arranges  behind  the  buried  eminences, 
in  its  own  easterly  line,  many  a  long  trail  of  gravel  and 
debris,  to  form  the  Crag  and  Tail  phenomenon  of  future  ge- 
ologists. As  we  extend  our  view,  we  may  mark,  far  in  the 
west,  where  the  arctic  current,  dotted  white  with  its  ice- 
mountains  and  floes,  impinges  on  the  gulf  stream  ;  and 
where,  sinking  from  its  chill  density  to  a  lower  stratum 
of  sea,  it  gives  up  its  burden  to  the  lighter  and  more  tepid 
tide.  A  thick  fog  hangs  over  the  junction,  where  the 
warmer  waters  of  the  west  and  south  encounter  the  chill, 
icy  air  of  the  north ;  and,  steaming  forth  into  the  bleak  at- 
mosphere like  a  seething  cauldron,  the  cloud,  when  the  west 
wind  blows,  fills  with  its  thick  gray  reek  the  recesses  of 
the  half-foundered  land,  and  obscures  the  prospect. 

11 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY. 

Anon  there  is  another  change  in  the  dream.  The  long 
period  of  submergence  is  past;  the  country  is  again  rising; 
and,  under  a  climate  still  ungenial  and  severe,  the  glaciers 
lengthen  out  seawards,  as  the  land  broadens  and  extends, 
till  the  northern  and  western  Highlands  seem  manacled  in 
ice.  Even  the  lower  hill-tops  exhibit  an  alpine  vegetation, 
beautiful,  though  somewhat  meagre ;  while  in  the  friths 
and  bays,  the  remote  ancestors  of  many  of  our  existing 
shells  that  thrive  in  the  higher  latitudes,  still  mix,  as  at  an 
earlier  period,  with  shells  whose  living  representatives  are 
now  to  be  sought  on  the  coasts  of  northern  Scandinavia 
and  Greenland.  Ages  pass ;  the  land  rises  slowly  over  the 
deep,  terrace  above  terrace  ;  the  thermal  line  moves  grad- 
ually to  the  north  ;  the  line  of  perpetual  snow  ascends  be- 
yond the  mountain  summits;  the  temperature  increases;  the 
ice  disappears ;  the  semi-arctic  plants  creep  up  the  hill-sides, 
to  be  supplanted  on  the  plains  by  the  leafy  denizens  of 
happier  climates ;  and  at  length,  under  skies  such  as  now 
look  down  upon  us,  and  on  nearly  the  existing  breadth  of 
land,  the  human  period  begins.  The  half-naked  hunter, 
armed  with  his  hatchet  or  lance  of  stone,  pursues  the  roe 
or  the  wild  ox  through  woods  that,  though  comparatively 
but  of  yesterday,  already  present  appearances  of  a  hoar 
antiquity;  or,  when  the  winter  snows  gather  around  his 
dwelling,  does  battle  at  its  beleaguered  threshold  with  the 
hungry  wolf  or  the  bear.  The  last  great  geologic  change 
takes  place :  the  coast  line  is  suddenly  elevated ;  and  the 
country  presents  a  new  front  to  the  sea.  And  on  the 
widened  platform,  when  yet  other  ages  have  come  and 
gone,  the  historic  period  commences,  and  the  light  of  a 
classical  literature  falls  for  the  first  time  on  the  incidents 
of  Scottish  story,  and  on  the  bold  features  of  Scottish 
character. 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  123 

It  is  said  that  modern  science  is  adverse  to  the  exercise 
and  development  of  the  imaginative  faculty.  But  is  it 
really  so  ?  Are  visions  such  as  those  in  which  we  have 
been  indulging  less  richly  charged  with  that  poetic  pabu- 
lum on  which  fancy  feeds  and  grows  strong,  than  those 
ancient  tales  of  enchantment  and  faery  which  beguiled  of 
old,  in  solitary  homesteads,  the  long  winter  nights  ?  Be- 
cause science  flourishes,  must  poesy  decline  ?  The  com- 
plaint serves  but  to  betray  the  weakness  of  the  class  who 
urge  it.  True,  in  an  age  like  the  present,  —  considerably 
more  scientific  then  poetical,  —  science  substitutes  for  the 
smaller  poetry  of  fiction,  the  great  poetry  of  truth ;  and 
as  there  is  a  more  general  interest  felt  in  new  revelations 
of  what  God  has  wrought,  than  in  exhibitions  of  what  the 
humbler  order  of  poets  have  half  borrowed,  half  invented, 
the  disappointed  dreamers  complain  that  the  "material 
laws  "  of  science  have  pushed  them  from  their  place.  As 
well  might  the  Arab  who  prided  himself  upon  the  beauty 
of  some  white  tent  which  he  had  reared  in  some  green 
oasis  of  the  desert,  complain  of  the  dull  tools  of  Belzoni's 
laborers,  when  engaged  in  clearing  from  the  sands  the 
front  of  some  august  temple  of  the  ancient  time.  It  is 
not  the  tools,  it  might  be  well  said  to  the  complainer,  that 
are  competing  with  your  neat  little  tent ;  it  is  the  sublime 
edifice,  hitherto  covered  up,  which  the  tools  are  laying 
bare.  Nor  is  it  the  material  laws,  we  may,  on  the  same 
principle,  say  to  the  poets  of  the  querulous  cast,  that  are 
overbearing  your  little  inventions,  and  making  them  seem 
small ;  but  those  sublime  works  and  wonderful  actings  of 
the  Creator  which  they  unveil,  and  bring  into  comparison 
with  yours.  But  from  His  works  and  His  actings  have  the 
masters  of  the  lyre  ever  derived  their  choicest  materials ; 
and  whenever  a  truly  great  poet  arises,  —  one  that  will 


124  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

add  a  profound  intellect  to  a  powerful  imagination,  —  he 
will  find  science  not  his  enemy,  but  an  obsequious  caterer 
and  a  devoted  friend.  He  will  find  sermons  in  stones,  and 
more  of  the  suggestive  and  the  sublime  in  a  few  broken 
scaurs  of  clay,  a  few  fragmentary  shells,  and  a  few  green 
reaches  of  the  old  coast  line,  than  versifiers  of  the  ordinary 
calibre  in  their  once  fresh  gems  and  flowers,  —  in  sublime 
ocean,  the  broad  earth,  or  the  blue  firmament  and  all  its 
stars. 


LECTURE     THIRD. 

The  Poet  Delta  (Dr.  Moir)  —  His  Definition  of  Poetry  —  His  Death  —  His  Burial- 
place  at  Inveresk  —  Vision,  Geological  and  Historical,  of  the  Surrounding 
Country  —  What  is  it  that  imparts  to  Nature  its  Poetry  — The  Tertiary  Forma- 
tion in  Scotland  —  In  Geologic  History  all  Ages  contemporary  —  Amber  the 
Resin  of  the  Pinits  succinifer  —  A  Vegetable  Production  of  the  Middle  Tertiary 
Ages  —  Its  Properties  and  Uses  —  The  Masses  of  Insects  inclosed  in  it  —  The 
Structural  Geology  of  Scotland — Its  Trap  Rock — The  Scenery  usually  asso- 
ciated with  the  Trap  Rock  —  H  ow  formed  —  The  Cretaceous  Period  in  Scotland 
—  Its  Productions  —  The  Chalk  Deposits  —  Death  of  Species  dependent  on  Laws 
different  from  those  which  determine  the  Death  of  Individuals -r- The  Two 
great  Infinites. 

THE  members  of  the  Philosophical  Institution  of  Edin- 
burgh enjoyed  the  privilege  last  season  of  listening  to  one 
of  the  sweetest  and  tenderest  of  modern  British  poets 
eloquently  descanting  on  the  history  of  modern  British 
poetry.  Rarely  had  master  established  for  himself  a  bet- 
ter claim  to  teach.  And,  regarding  the  elegant  volume 
produced  on  that  occasion,  so  exquisite  in  its  taste  and  so 
generous  in  its  criticisms,  it  may  justly  be  said  that  perhaps 
its  only,  at  all  events  its  gravest  defect,  is  the  inevitable 
one  that,  in  exhibiting  all  that  during  the  bypast  genera- 
tion was  most  characteristic  and  best  in  the  poesy  of  our 
country,  it  should  have  taken  no  cognizance  of  the  poetry 
of  Delta.  Dr.  Moir  had  just  finished  his  course,  but  his 
volume  had  not  yet  appeared,  when,  urged  by  a  friend,  I 
perhaps  too  rashly  consented  to  contribute  two  lectures  to 
a  course  then  delivering  in  the  native  town  of  the  poet; 
and  in  one  of  these  I  expressed  the  conviction  to  which  I 

11* 


126  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

gave  utterance  last  season  in  this  place,  that  there  is  no 
incompatibility  between  the  pursuit  of  geologic  science 
and  a  genial  development  of  the  poetic  faculty.  Dr.  Moir 
had  honored  my  address  with  his  presence ;  he  had  listened 
with  apparent  attention  to  a  view  very  much  opposed,  as 
I  was  told  after  the  breaking  up  of  the  meeting,  to  one 
which  he  himself  had  promulgated  to  the  Institution  only 
a  few  weeks  before ;  and  on  the  publication  of  his  little 
volume,  he  politely  sent  me  a  copy,  accompanied  by  a  kind 
note,  in  which  he  referred  to  the  point  apparently  at  issue 
between  us  as  involving  rather  a  seeming  than  a  real  dif- 
ference. "Our  antagonism  respecting  the  relations  of 
poetry  and  science,"  he  said,  "  is,  I  doubt  not,  much  more 
apparent  than  real,  and  arises  simply  from  the  opposite 
aspects  in  which  we  have  regarded  the  subject."  I  read 
his  work  with  interest;  and  at  first  deemed  the  differ- 
ence somewhat  more  than  merely  apparent.  I  found 
the  lecturer  speaking  of  "  staggering  blows"  inflicted  on 
the  poetry  of  the  age  by  science  in  not  a  few  formidably 
prosaic  shapes,  —  in  the  shape,  among  the  rest,  of  "geolog- 
ic-ill exposition  ;"  and  of  "  rocks  stratified  by  the  geologists 
as  satins  are  measured  by  mercers,"  and,  in  consequence, 
no  longer  redolent  of  that  emotion  of  the  sublime  which 
was  wont  to  breathe  forth  of  old  from  broken  crags  and 
giddy  precipices.  But  his  definition  of  poetry  reassured 
me,  and  set  all  right  again.  "Poetry,"  he  said,  "may  be 
defined  to  be  objects  or  subjects  seen  through  the  mirror 
of  imagination,  and  descanted  on  in  harmonious  language ; 
and  if  so,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  very  exactness  of 
knowledge  is  a  barrier  to  the  laying  on  of  that  coloring  by 
which  facts  can  be  invested  with  the  illusive  hues  of  poetry. 
Wherever  light  penetrates  the  obscure  and  illuminates  the 
uncertain,  we  may  rest  assured  that  a  demesne  has  been 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  127 

lost  to  the  realms  of  imagination."  Now,  if  such  be  poe- 
try, I  said,  and  such  the  conditions  favorable  to  its  devel- 
opment, the  poets  need  be  in  no  degree  jealous  of  the 
geologists.  The  stony  science,  with  buried  creations  for 
its  domains,  and  half  an  eternity  charged  with  its  annals, 
possesses  its  realms  of  dim  and  shadowy  fields,  in  which 
troops  of  fancies  already  walk  like  disembodied  ghosts  in 
the  old  fields  of  Elysium,  and  which  bid  fair  to  be  quite 
dark  and  uncertain  enough  for  all  the  purposes  of  poesy 
for  centuries  to  come. 

Alas !  only  a/ew  weeks  after,  amid  hundreds  of  his  sor- 
rowing friends  and  townsmen,  I  followed  the  honored  re- 
mains of  the  poet  to  the  grave;  and  heard,  in  that  old, 
picturesque  burying-ground  which  commands  on  its  green 
ridge  the  effluence  of  the  Esk,  the  shovelled  earth  falling 
heavy  on  the  coffin-lid.  It  was  a  lovely  day  of  chequered 
shadow  and  sunshine ;  and  the  wide  frith  slept  silently  in 
the  calm,  with  a  dream-like  spectrum  of  the  heavens  mir- 
rored on  its  bosom.  From  the  sadness  of  the  present  my 
thoughts  let  themselves  out  upon  the  past.  I  stood  among 
the  groves  on  a  grassy  mound  which  had  been  reared  by 
the  old  Roman  invader  greatly  more  than  a  thousand  years 
before ;  and  I  bethought  me  how,  on  visiting  the  place  a 
few  twelvemonths  previous,  for  the  first  time,  I  had  first 
of  all  sought  out  the  burying-ground  of  the  family  of  the 
deceased,  —  a  spot  endeared  to  every  lover  of  poesy  by 
those  tenderest  and  sweetest  of  "domestic  verses"  which 
show  how  truly,  according  to  Cowper,  "  the  poet's  lyre " 
had  been  "  the  poet's  heart ; "  and  how  I  had  next  set  my- 
self to  trace,  as  next  in  interest,  the  remains  of  that  stern 
old  people  whose  thirst  of  conquest  and  dominion  had 
led  them  so  far.  And  lo !  like  a  dream  remembered  in  a 
dream,  as  the  crowd  broke  up  and  retired,  the  visions  of 


128  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

that  quiet  day  were  again  conjured  up  before  me,  but  bear- 
ing now  a  felt  reference  to  the  respected  dead,  and  accom- 
panied by  the  conviction  that,  had  we  been  destined  to 
meet,  and  to  compare  at  length  our  respective  views,  we 
should  have  found  them  essentially  the  same. 

On  that  rising  ground,  so  rich  in  historic  associations, 
both  Somerset  and  Cromwell  had  planted  their  cannon, 
and  it  had  witnessed  the  disaster  at  Pinkie,  and  the  head- 
long flight  of  the  dragoons  of  Cope.  But,  passing  over 
the  more  recent  scenes,  the  vision  of  a  forest-covered  coun- 
try rose  before  me,  —  a  vision  of  the  ancient  aboriginal 
woods  rising  dusky  and  brown  in  one  vast  thicket,  from 
the  windings  of  the  Esk  to  the  pale  brow  of  the  Pent- 
lands.  Nor  was  the  landscape  without  its  human  figures. 
The  grim  legionaries  of  the  Proconsul  of  Augustus  were 
opening  with  busy  axes  a  shady  roadway  through  the 
midst ;  and  the  incessant  strokes  of  the  axe  and  the  crash 
of  falling  trees  echoed  in  the  silence  throughout  the  valley. 
And  then  there  arose  another  and  earlier  vision,  when  the 
range  of  semicircular  heights  which  rise  above  the  ancient 
Saxon  borough,  with  its  squat  tower  and  antique  bridge, 
existed  as  the  coast,  line,  and  the  site  of  the  town  itself  as 
a  sandy  bay,  swum  over  by  the  sea-wolf  and  the  seal ;  and 
the  long  ridge  now  occupied  by  garden  and  villa,  church 
and  burying-ground,  as  a  steep,  gravelly  bar,  heaped  up  in 
the  vexed  line,  where  the  tides  of  the  river  on  the  one 
hand  contended  with  the  waves  of  the  Frith  on  the  other; 
and  the  Esk,  fed  by  the  glaciers  of  the  interior,  whose  blue 
gleam  I  could  mark  on  the  distant  Lammermoors  and  the 
steeper  Pentlands,  rolled  downwards,  a  vast  stream,  that 
filled  from  side  to  side  the  ample  banks  which,  even  when 
heaviest  in  flood,  it  scarce  half  fills  now ;  while  a  scantier 
and  dingier  foliage  than  before,  composed  chiefly  of  taper 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  129 

spruce  and  dark  pine,  roughened  the  lower  plains,  and 
flung  its  multitudinous  boughs  athwart  the  turbid  and 
troubled  eddies.  And  then  there  arose  yet  other  and 
remoter  scenes.  From  a  foreground  of  weltering  sea  I 
could  mark  a  scattered  archipelago  of  waste,  uninhabited 
islands,  picturesquely  roughened  by  wood  and  rock;  and 
near  where  the  Scottish  capital  now  stands,  a  submarine 
volcano  sent  forth  its  slim  column  of  mingled  smoke  and 
vapor  into  the  sky.  And  then  there  rose  in  quick  succes- 
sion scenes  of  the  old  Carboniferous  forests:  long  with- 
drawing lakes,  fringed  with  dense  thickets  of  the  green 
Calamite,  tall  and  straight  as  the  masts  of  pinnaces,  and 
inhabited  by  enormous  fishes,  that  glittered  through  the 
transparent  depths  in  their  enamelled  armor  of  proof;  or 
glades  of  thickest  verdure,  where  the  tree-fern  mingled 
its  branch-like  fronds  with  the  hirsute  arms  of  the  gigan- 
tic club-moss,  and  where,  amid  strange  forms  of  shrub  and 
tree  no  longer  known  on  earth,  the  stately  Araucarian 
reared  its  proud  head  two  hundred  feet  over  the  soil ;  or 
yet  again,  there  rose  a  scene  of  coral  bowers  and  encrinal 
thickets,  that  glimmered  amid  the  deep  green  of  the  an- 
cient ocean,  and  in  which,  as  in  the  groves  sung  by  Ovid, 
the  plants  were  sentient,  and  the  shrinking  flowers  bled 
when  injured.  And,  last  of  all,  on  the  further  limits  of 
organic  life  a  thick  fog  came  down  upon  the  sea,  and  my 
excursions  into  the  remote  past  terminated,  like  the  voy- 
age of  an  old  fabulous  navigator,  in  thick  darkness.  Each 
of  the  series  of  visions,  whether  of  the  comparatively  re- 
cent or  the  remote  past,  in  which  I  at  that  time  indulged, 
had  employed  the  same  faculties  and  gratified  the  same 
feelings ;  and  though,  in  surveying  the  stuff  out  of  which 
they  had  been  sublimed,  I  could  easily  say  where  the  his- 
toric ended  and  the  geologic  began,  no  corresponding  line 


130  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

indicated  in  the  visions  themselves  where  the  poetry  ended 
and  the  prose  began.  The  visions,  whether  historic  or 
geologic,  "were  of  imagination  all  compact."  They  all 
involved  the  same  processes  of  mind — though,  of  course, 
in  this  instance  mind  of  a  humbler  order  and  ruder  tex- 
ture —  as  those  exhibited  in  the  sweet  and  fragrant  verse 
of  the  poet  himself,  —  as  those  exercised,  let  me  say,  in  his 
vision  on  "  Mary's  Mount,"  when,  with  quiet  graves  above, 
and  surrounded  by  quiet  fields,  he  saw  the  contending 
hosts  of  a  former  day  thronging  the  lower  ground,  and, 

"  With  hilt  to  hilt,  and  hand  to  hand, 
The  ehildren  of  our  mother  land 
To  battle  came;" 

or  when  he  called  up,  after  the  lapse  of  half  a  lifetime, 
how  when,  in  a  wintry  morning,  he  had  journeyed  before 
daybreak,  a  happy  boy,  along  the  frozen  Esk,  and  saw 

"  In  the  far  west  the  Pentland's  gloomy  ridge 
Belting  the  pale  blue  sky,  whereon  a  cloud, 
Fantastic,  gray,  and  tinged  with  solemn  light, 
Lay  like  a  dreaming  monster,  and  the  moon, 
Waning,  above  its  silvery  rim  upheld 
Her  horns,  as  't  were  a  spectre  of  the  past." 

I  shall  continue  to  hold,  therefore,  that  there  was  no  real 
difference  between  the  views  of  the  poet  and  those  which 
I  myself  entertain,  but  that,  as  he  himself  well  expressed 
it,  our  «  apparent  antagonism  arose  simply  from  the  oppo- 
site aspects  in  which  we  had  viewed  the  subject."  He  had 
been  thinking  of  but  stiff  diagrams  and  hard  names,  —  of 
dead  strata  measured  off,  in  "geological  exposition,"  by 
the  yard  and  the  mile,  and  enveloped  in  the  obscuring 
folds  of  a  Babylonish  phraseology;  while  I,  looking  through 
the  crooked  characters  and  uncouth  sounds  in  which  the 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  131 

meanings  of  the  science  are  locked  up,  to  the  meanings 

^ 

themselves,  was  luxuriating  among  the  strange,  wild  narra- 
tives and  richly  poetic  descriptions  of  which  its  pregnant 
recoi'ds  consist. 

What  is  it,  let  me  ask,  that  imparts  to  Nature  its  poe- 
try? It  is  not  in  Nature  itself;  it  resides  not  either  in 
dead  or  organized  matter,  —  in  rock,  or  bird,  or  flower; 
"  the  deep  saith  it  is  not  in  me,  and  the  sea  saith  it  is  not 
in  me."  It  is  in  mind  that  it  lives  and  breathes :  external 
nature  is  but  its  storehouse  of  subjects  and  models;  and  it 
is  not  until  these  are  called  up  as  images,  and  invested  with 
"  the  light  that  never  was  on  land  or  sea,"  that  they  cease 
to  be  of  the  earth  earthy,  and  form  the  ethereal  stuff  of 
which  the  visions  of  the  poet  are  made.  Nay,  is  it  not 
mainly  through  that  associative  faculty  to  which  the  sights 
and  sounds  of  present  nature  become  suggestive  of  the 
images  of  a  nature  not  present,  but  seen  within  the  mind, 
that  the  landscape  pleases,  or  that  we  find  beauty  in  its 
woods  or  beside  its  streams,  or  the  impressive  and  the  sub- 
lime among  its  mountains  and  rocks?  Nature  is  a  vast  tab- 
let, inscribed  with  signs,  each  of  which  has  its  own  signifi- 
cancy,  and  becomes  poetry  in  the  mind  wh'en  read ;  and 
geology  is  simply  the  key  by  which  myriads  of  these  signs, 
hitherto  undecipherable,  can  be  unlocked  and  perused,  and 
thus  a  new  province  added  to  the  poetical  domain.  We 
are  told  by  travellers,  that  the  rocks  of  the  wilderness  of 
Sinai  are  lettered  over  with  strange  characters,  inscribed 
during  the  forty  years'  wanderings  of  Israel.  They  testify, 
in  their  very  existence,  of  a  remote  past,  when  the  cloud- 
o'ershadowed  tabernacle  rose  amid  the  tents  of  the  desert; 
and  who  shall  dare  say  whether  to  the  scholar  who  could 
dive  into  their  hidden  meanings  they  might  not  be  found 
charged  with  the  very  songs  sung  of  old  by  Moses  and  by 


132  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

Miriam,  when  the  sea  rolled  over  the  pride  of  Egypt?  To 
the  geologist  every  rock  bears  its  inscription  engraved  in 
ancient  hieroglyphic  characters,  that  tell  of  the  Creator's 
journeyings  of  old,  of  the  laws  which  He  gave,  the  tab- 
ernacles which  He  reared,  and  the  marvels  which  He 
wrought,  —  of  mute  prophecies  wrapped  up  in  type  and 
symbol,  —  of  earth  gulfs  that  opened,  and  of  reptiles  that 
flew,  —  of  fiery  plagues  that  devastated  on  the  dry  land, 
and  of  hosts  more  numerous  than  that  of  Pharaoh,  that 
"sank  like  lead  in  the  mighty  waters;"  and,  having  in 
some  degree  mastered  the  occult  meanings  of  these  strange 
hieroglyphics,  we  must  be  permitted  to  refer,  in  asserting 
the  poetry  of  our  science,  to  the  sublime  revelations  with 
which  they  are  charged,  and  the  vivid  imagery  which  they 
conjure  up.  But  our  history  lags  in  its  progress,  while 
we  discuss  the  poetic  capabilities  of  the  study  through 
which  its  records  are  read  and  its  materials  derived. 

In  the  deposits  of  that  Tertiary  division  of  the  geologic 
formation  which  represents  in  the  history  of  the  globe  the 
period  during  which  mammals  began  to  be  abundant,  and 
in  which  the  great  Cuvier  won  his  laurels,  Scotland  is  one 
of  the  poorest  of  European  countries.  Save  for  the  com- 
paratively recent  discovery  of  Tertiary  beds  in  the  island 
of  Mull  by  a  nobleman  fitted  by  nature  either  to  adorn 
the  literature  or  extend  the  science  of  his  country,  the 
geological  historian  would  have  to  pass  direct  from  the 
Pleistocene  beds,  with  their  grooved  and  polished  pebbles 
and  their  semi-arctic  shells,  to  the  Chalk  fossils  of  Banff  and 
Aberdeen.  But  the  discovery  of  his  Grace  the  Duke  of 
Argyll  furnishes  us  with  an  interesting  glimpse  of  a  middle 
period  widely  different  in  its  character  from  either  the 
Cretaceous  system  or  the  boulder-clay.  In  the  island  of 
Mull,  in  a  headland  that  rises  about  one  hundred  and  thirty 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  133 

feet  over  the  sea,  there  occur,  interposed  between  thick 
beds  of  trap,  three  comparatively  thin  beds  of  a  gray  are- 
naceous shale,  charged  with  fossil  leaves,  as  beautifully 
spread  out,  and  with  their  ribs  and  veins  as  distinctly  vis- 
ible, as  if  they  had  been  preserved  in  the  herbarium  of  a 
botanist.  Most  of  them  belong  to  extinct  species  of  exist- 
ing families  of  dicotyledonous  trees,  such  as  the  plane  and 
the  buckthorn,  mingled,  however,  with  narrow  linear  leaves 
of  cone-bearing  trees,. which  are  supposed  to  belong,  in 
this  instance,  to  a  species  of  yew,  and  with  what  seem  the 
fronds  of  fern  and  the  stems  of  equisetacea.  Some  of  the 
beds  of  coal  which  have  been  long  known  to  occur  among 
the  traps  of  the  island  of  Mull  are  regarded  by  the  Duke 
of  Argyll  as  prolongations  of  these  Tertiary  leaf-beds,  so 
mineralized  by  some  metamorphic  action  as  to  have  lost 
the  organic  structure.  There  must  have  been  vast  accu- 
mulations of  leaves  ere  they  could  have  yielded  beds  of 
coal.  The  middle  or  second  bed  of  the  three  his  Grace 
describes  as  peculiarly  rich  in  the  leafy  impressions  of  this 
ancient  period ;  and  I  need  scarce  say  how  suggestive  the 
glimpse  is  which  is  furnished  us  by  these  buried  layers 
of  the  foliage  of  Tertiary  forests  in  Scotland,  of  which  no 
other  known  memorial  remains.  You  all  remember  Cole- 
ridge's fine  comparison  of  the  sorely-worn  sails  of  the 
vessel  in  which  the  ancient  mariner  performed  his  voyage 
of  peril  and  prodigy,  to 

"  Brown  skeletons  of  leaves  that  lay 

The  forest  brook  along, 
When  the  ivy  tod  is  heavy  with  snow, 
And  the  owlet  whoops  to  the  wolf  below; " 

and  you  must  have  often  marked  the  extreme  delicacy  of 
those  deposited  leaves,  macerated  during  the  winter  sea- 

12 


134  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

son  at  the  bottom  of  some  woodland  pool,  which  sug- 
gested the  poet's  simile.  In  that  Tertiary  period  to  which 
the  leaf-beds  of  Mull  belong,  it  would  seem  that  extensive 
forests,  chiefly  of  deciduous  trees,  shed  year  after  year 
their  summer  coverings  of  leaves,  some  of  which  fell,  and 
some  of  which  were  blown  by  the  autumnal  gusts,  into  the 
streams  of  the  country,  and  were  swept  down  by  the  cur- 
rent to  lakes  or  estuaries,  where  they  lay  gradually  resolv- 
ing into  such  brown  skeletons  as  caught  the  eye  of  Cole- 
ridge. We  learn  further,  that  there  were  forces  active  at 
the  time,  of  which  at  any  later  period  we  have  had  no 
examples  in  the  British  islands.  One  of  the  leaf-beds 
described  by  his  Grace  is  overlaid  by  a  bed  of  volcanic 
ashes»or  tuff  seven  feet  thick ;  another  by  a  bed  of  similar 
ashes  mixed  with  chalk  flints,  twenty  feet  thick ;  and  yet 
another  —  the  topmost  layer  —  bears  over  it  a  bed  of  over- 
flowing columnar  basalt,  forty  feet  thick.  The  volcanic 
agencies  were  active  in  what  is  now  Scotland  during  the 
ages  of  its  Tertiary  forests. 

The  only  Tertiary  fossils  of  Scotland  yet  discovered  are 
these  forest  and  fern  leaves  of  the  Mull  deposits.  Their 
place  in  the  great  geologic  division  to  which  they  belong 
is  still  definitely  to  fix ;  but  some  of  our  higher  geologists 
are,  I  find,  disposed  to  refer  them  to  the  second  Tertiary 
or  Miocene  epoch,  though  with  considerable  hesitation. 
They  belong,  it  is  probable,  to  a  period  not  very  widely 
removed  from  that  of  the  richly  fossiliferous  Marlstone  of 
(Eningen,  on  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  with  its  vast  abun- 
dance of  plants,  chiefly  dicotyledonous,  —  of  fishes  specifi- 
cally different  from  those  which  now  exist,  but  of  the 
existing  genera,  —  of  a  fox,  which  only  the  comparative 
anatomist  can  distinguish  from  the  recent  species  of  this 
country,  —  and  of  reptiles  generically  akin  to  those  of 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  185 

the  United  States.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that,  both  in  its 
animal  and  vegetable  productions,  that  part  of  the  New 
World  which  borders  upon  the  Atlantic  in  the  temperate 
zone,  from  Carolina  to  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Lawrence,  still 
presents  very  much  the  appearance  which  was  presented 
by  the  flora  and  fauna  of  Europe  during  the  later  Tertiary 
periods.  It  has  been  often  remarked,  in  reference  to 
human  manners  and  the  progress  of  civilization,  that  all 
ages  of  the  world  may  be  regarded  as  contemporary. 
Man  is  still  in  many  of  the  South  Sea  Islands  what  he  was 
in  our  own  country  previous  to  the  times  of  the  Roman 
invasion ;  and  there  are  provinces  in  Spain  and  Portugal 
in  which  neither  the  people  nor  the  clergy  have  got  be- 
yond the  semi-barbarism  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Curiously 
enough,  in  geologic  history  also,  though  in  a  narrower  and 
more  restricted  sense,  all  ages  are  contemporary.  The 
Galapagos  have  their  age  of  reptiles,  New  Zealand  its 
age  of  birds,  and  New  Holland  its  age  of  marsupial  quad- 
rupeds. These  countries  bear  now,  in  not  a  few  par- 
ticulars, the  character  of  the  Oolitic  period  in  our  own 
country.  Again,  on  the  eastern  coasts  of  North  America 
we  are  presented  with  a  vegetation  greatly  resembling  that 
of  some  of  the  later  Tertiary  periods ;  and  of  several  of 
its  animals  the  type  is  still  more  ancient.  America,  though 
emphatically  the  New  World  in  relation  to  its  discovery 
by  civilized  man,  is,  at  least  in  these  regions,  an  old  world 
in  relation  to  geological  type ;  and  it  is  the  so-called  Old 
World  that  is  in  reality  the  new  one.  "  If  we  compare," 
says  Professor  Agassiz,  in  his  late  admirable  work,  "  Lake 
Superior,"  —  "if  we  compare  a  list  of  the  fossil  trees  and 
shrubs  from  the  Tertiary  beds  of  GEningen  with  a  cata- 
logue of  the  trees  and  shrubs  of  Europe  and  North  Amer- 
ica, it  will  be  seen  that  the  differences  scarcely  go  beyond 


136  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

those  shown  by  the  different  floras  of  these  continents 
under  the  same  latitudes.  But  what  is  quite  extraordi- 
nary and  unexpected  is  the  fact,  that  the  European  fossil 
plants  of  that  locality  resemble  more  closely  the  trees  and 
shrubs  which  grow  at  present  in  the  eastern  parts  of  North 
America,  than  those  of  any  other  part  of  the  world ;  thus 
allowing  us  to  express  correctly  the  difference  between  the 
opposite  coasts  of  these  continents,  by  saying  that  the 
present  eastern  American  flora,  and,  I  may  add,  the  fauna 
also,  have  a  more  ancient  character  than  those  of  Europe. 
The  plants,  especially  the  trees  and  shrubs  growing  in  our 
days  in  the  United  States,  are,  as  it  were,  old-fashioned ; 
and  the  characteristic  genera  Lagoings,  Chelydra,  and  the 
large  Salamanders,  with  permanent  gills,  that  remind  us 
of  the  fossils  of  CEningen,  are  at  least  equally  so ;  they 
bear  tfie  marks  of  former  ages?  This  interesting  fact  — 
vouched  for  by  assuredly  no  mean  authority  —  may  enable 
us  to  conceive  of  the  general  aspect  of  our  country,  so  far 
at  least  as  its  appearance  depended  on  its  vegetation,  to- 
wards the  close  of  the  Miocene  period.  Old  Scotland  ex- 
hibited features  in  that  age  greatly  resembling  those  pre- 
sented to  the  puritan  fathers  by  the  forest-covered  shores 
of  New  England  little  more  than  two  centuries  ago.  But 
no  family  of  man  dwelt  in  its  solitary  woods ;  and,  as 
shown  by  its  widely  spread  deposits  of  trap-tuff,  and  its 
vast  beds  of  overlying  basalt,  broken  by  faults  and  shifts, 
its  ancient  volcanoes  had  not  yet  died  out,  and  it  must 
have  had  its  frequent  earthquake  agues  and  shaking  fits. 

There  is,  however,  another  witness  besides  the  leaf-beds 
of  the  island  of  Mull,  which  we  may  properly  call  into  court 
to  give  evidence  regarding  the  Tertiary  period  in  Scotland. 
It  is  known  that  from  a  very  early  time  masses  of  amber 
have  been  occasionally  furnished  by  the  north-eastern 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  137 

shores  of  the  kingdom,  in  especial  by  that  extensive  tract 
of  coast  which  stretches  from  the  Buchan-ness  to  the 
Frith  of  Tay ;  and  the  geologist  now  recognizes  amber 
as  a  vegetable  production  of  the  Middle  Tertiary  ages. 
It  is  the  resin  of  an  extinct  pine,  which  the  fossil  botanist 
has  only  of  late  learned  to  term  the  Pinus  succinifer,  or 
amber  pine,  but  which  the  Prussian  peasantry,  who  gather 
amber  on  the  southern  shores  of  the  Baltic,  used  for  ages 
to  associate  with  this  substance,  from  its  occurrence  in  a 
fossil  state  in  the  same  beds  as  amber  wood.  The  orna- 
mental character  of  this  precious  resin  seems  to  have  been 
appreciated  by  the  native  Scotch  at  an  early  period  :  beads 
of  amber  have  been  found  in  the  old  sepulchral  barrows 
of  the  kingdom.  Its  value,  however,  as  we  learn  from  the 
first  notice1  of  it  which  occurs  in  our  written  history,  — 
that  of  Hector  Boece,  —  has  not  been  always  appreciated. 
After  describing  it,  not  very  inadequately,  as  "  ane  maner 
of  goum  or  electuar,  hewit  like  gold,  and  sa  attractive  of 
iiatur,  that  it  drawis  stra,  flax,  or  hemmes  of  claethis  to  it 
in  the  samen  maner  as  does  an  adamant  stone  grow,"  he 
goes  on  to  say,  that  "  twa  year  afore  the  comin  af  [his] 
buke  to  licht  (1524)  thair  arrivit  an  gret  lompe  of  this 
goum  in  Buchquhane,  als  meikle  as  an  hens ;  and  wes 
brocht  hame  by  the  herdes  quhilk  wer  kepand  thair  bestis, 
to  thair  housis,  and  cassin  in  the  fere.  And  becnus  they 
fand  an  smell  and  odour  thairwith,  they  scha  to  thair 
maister  that  it  wes  garand  for  the  trasens  that  is  maid  in 
the  kirkes.  Thair  maister  wes  ane  rud  man  as  thay  wer; 
and  tuk  bot  ane  litell  part  thairof,  and  left  the  remanent 
part  behind  him  as  mater  of  litell  effect.  All  the  parts  of 
this  goum,  quhen  it  wes  broken,  wes  of  hew  of  gold,  and 
schone  lyke  the  licht  of  an  candell.  The  maist  part  of 
this  goum  or  electuar  wes  destroyit  be  rud  peple  afore  't 

12* 


138  LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY. 

cam  to  any  wise  mannis  eirs ;  of  quhome  may  be  verifyet 
the  proverb,  *  The  sow  cares  not  for  balme.'  Als  sone  as  I 
wes  advcrtisit  thairof,  I  maid  sic  diligence  that  ane  pairt 
of  it  was  brocht  me  at  Aberdene."  I  may  add  to  this 
notice  of  the  old  chronicler,  that  up  to  a  com'paratively 
recent  period,  ornaments  of  amber,  especially  amber  beads 
of  large  size,  or,  as  they  were  termed  by  our  ancestors, 
"lamour  beads,"  were  highly  valued  by  the  humbler  Scotch. 
That  mysterious  attractive  property  which  resided  in  this 
gem-like  resin,  and  which  has  since  been  found  pregnant 
with  that  wonderful  science  to  which  the  substance  has 
given  its  Greek  name,  electrum,  threw  a  halo  of  mystery 
around  it,  that  served  to  enhance  its  native  beauty.  The 
Laird  of  Dumbiedikes  was,  it  must  be  confessed,  neither  a 
very  fervent  nor  very  poetical  lover ;  but  a  lover  he  was ; 
and  yet  he  could  find  nothing  more  apt  with  which  to 
compare  the  eyes  of  his  mistress,  when  turned  upon  him 
in  her  gratitude,  than  to  beads  of  amber.  "  Dinna  ye 
think,"  said  the  laird,  "puir  Jeanie's  e'en,  wi'  the  tears 
in  them,  glanced  like  lamour  beads,  Mr.  Saddletree?" 

To  the  geologist  this  precious 'gum  of  the  Tertiary  ages 
is  fraught  with  a  peculiar  interest,  from  the  circumstance 
that  it  forms  the  best  of  all  matrices  for  the  preservation 
of  organisms  of  the  more  fragile  kinds.  Mosses,  fungi, 
and  liverworts,  arc  plants  of  so  delicate  a  structure,  that 
they  are  rarely  or  never  preserved  in  shale  or  stone ;  but 
specimens  of  all  three  have  been  found  locked  up  in 
amber  in  a  state  of  the  most  perfect  keeping.  And, 
les  containing  fragments  of  the  pine  which  produced 
it,  it  has  been  found  to  contain  minute  pieces  of  four  other 
species  of  pine,  with  bits  of  cypresses,  yews,  junipers, 
oaks,  poplars,  beeches,  etc.,— in  all,  forty-eight  different 
species  of  shrubs  and  trees,  which  must  have  flourished  in 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  Ib9 

the  forests  where  it  grew,  and  which,  "viewed  in  the 
group,  may  be  regarded  as  constituting,"  says  Professor 
Goppert,  "a  flora  of  North  American  character."  You 
will  of  course  remark  how  directly  this  evidence  bears  on 
that  of  Professor  Agassiz.  The  most  remarkable  organ- 
isms of  the  amber  are,  however,  its  insects,  —  a  kind  of 
fossils  suggestive  of  a  very  different  poetry  from  that 
which  Pope  elaborated  from  them  in  his  well-known 
simile : 

"Pretty  in  amber  to  observe  the  forms 
Of  hairs,  or  straws,  or  dirt,  or  grubs,  or  worms : 
The  things,  we  know,  are  neither  rich  nor  rare, 
But  wonder  how  the  mischief  they  got  there! " 

Fossil  insects  occur  in  both  the  Secondary  and  Palaeozoic 
divisions,  but  rarely  indeed  in  a  state  of  sufficient  entire- 
ness  to  enable  the  entomologist  to  distinguish  their  spe- 
cies. Even  in  classing  them  into  families  and  genera,  our 
best  writers  on  the  subject,  such  as  the  Rev.  Mr.  Brodie', 
confess  that  some  of  the  number  are  very  imperfectly 
made  out.  In  the  amber,  on  the  contrary,  even  the  most 
delicate  ephemerae  that  ever  sported  for  a  single  summer 
evening  in  a  forest  glade,  and  then  perished  as  the  night 
came  on,  are  preserved  in  a  state  of  perfect  entireness. 
In  the  amber  of  Prussia  eight  hundred  different  kinds 
of  insects  have  been  determined,  most  of  them  belonging 
-A,o  species,  and  even  genera,  that  appear  to  be  distinct 
from  any  now  known ;  while  of  the  others,  some  are 
nearly  related  to  indigenous  species,  and  some  seem  iden- 
tical with  existing  forms  that  inhabit  the  warmer  climates 
of  the  south.  From  their  great  specific  variety  and 
abundance  we  may  infer  that  insects  then,  as  now,  formed 
the  most  numerous  division  of  the  animal  kingdom.  Our 
entomologists  reckon  at  the  present  time  about  eleven 


140  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

thousand  species  of  recent  British  insects,  —  a  number 
many  times  greater  than  that  of  all  itsv  other  denizens 
of  the  animal  kingdom  united.  You  will  scarce  deem  the 
riddle  regarding  the  entombment  of  these  fragile  crea- 
tures in  the  amber,  which  so  puzzled  the  poet,  particularly 
a  hard  one :  the  process  must  have  resembled  that  which 
we  see  going  on  in  our  pine-forests  every  summer.  The 
little  flutterers  must  have  settled  on  the  bleeding-  trunks 
of  the  Pinus  succinifer,  and  stuck  fast,  and  the  after  flow 
of  the  sap  covered  them  over.  They  add  an  interesting 
feature,  identical  with  that  sung  by  the  poet,  to  the  odor- 
iferous amber  forests  of  the  Tertiary.  The  hot  sun  is 
riding  high  over  the  recesses  of  one  of  these  deep  woods, 
never  yet  trodden  by  human  foot,  and  lighting  up  the 
waved  lines  of  delicate  green  with  which  spring,  just  pass- 
ing into  early  summer,  has  befringed  the  dark  pines,  and 
the  yet  unwithered  catkins  of  the  poplar  and  plane,  and 
the  white  blossoms  of  the  buckthorn.  The  cave-bear  and 
hyena  repose  in  silence  in  their  dens,  and  not  a  wandering 
breeze  rustles  among  the  young  leafage. 

" But  hark!  how  through  the  peopled  air 

The  busy  murmur  glows; 
The  insect  youth  are  on  the  wing, 
Eager  to  taste  the  honied  spring, 
And  float  amid  the  liquid  noon : 
Some  lightly  o'er  the  current  skim, 
Some  show  their  gaily  gilded  trim 
Quick  glaring  to  the  sun." 

And  lo !  where  the  forest  glade  terminates  in  a  brown, 
primeval  wilderness,  the  sunbeams  fall  with  dazzling 
brightness  on  the  trunk  of  a  tall,  stately  tree,  just  a  little 
touched  with  decay;  and  it  reflects  the  light  far  and  wide, 
and  gleams  in  strong  contrast  with  the  gloom  of  the 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  141 

bosky  recesses  beyond,  like  the  pillar  of  fire  in  the  wilder- 
ness relieved  against  the  cloud  of  night.  'T  is  a  decaying 
pine  of  stateliest  size,  bleeding  amber.  The  insects  of  the 
hour  flutter  around  it ;  and  when,  beguiled  by  the  grate- 
ful perfume,  they  touch  its  deceitful  surface,  they  fare  as 
the  lords  of  creation  did  in  a  long  posterior  age,  in  that 

"  Serbonian  bog, 

Betwixt  Damiata  and  Mount  Casius  old, 
Where  armies  whole  have  sunk." 

But,  as  happened  to  so  many  of  the  heroes  of  classic  his- 
tory, death  is  fame  here,  and  by  dying  they  became  im- 
mortal ;  for  it  is  from  the  individuals  who  thus  perish  that 
future  ages  are  yet  to  learn  that  the  species  which  they 
represent  ever  existed,  or  to  become  acquainted  with  even 
the  generic  peculiarities  by  which  they  were  distinguished. 
The  question  still  remains,  whence  has  the  amber  of 
our  Scottish  coasts  been  derived?  It  occurs  in  situ  in 
Tertiary  deposits  in  the  neighborhood  of  London :  good 
specimens  of  considerable  size  have  been  found,  for  in- 
stance, in  a  clay-pit  near  Hyde  Park  corner,  not  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  from  the  site  of  the  Crystal  Palace.  It  occurs 
too,  in  Prussia,  in  a  clay-bed  of  considerable  horizontal 
extent,  of  which  the  larger  part  lies  under  the  waves  of 
the  Baltic,  but  which  rises  on  some  parts  of  the  coast 
about  forty  feet  over  the  level  of  that  sea,  and  to  which 
of  late  years  a  sort  of  classical  interest  has  been  given  by 
a  modern  fiction,  worthy,  from  its  air  of  matter-of-fact 
truthfulness,  of  our  own  Defoe,  —  the  "Amber  Witch." 
The  black  amber  vein  found  by  the  pastor's  little  daughter 
is  described  in  the  story  as  occurring  high  in  a  wooded 
defile  behind  her  father's  parsonage,  and  as  owing  its  black 
color  to  the  quantity  of  charcoal,  t.  e.,  carbonized  wood, 


1  1 2  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

\\  hich  it  contained.  And  in  both  particulars  the  descrip- 
tion is  true  to  the  geology  of  the  amber  deposits.  But 
we  have  no  amber  deposits  in  Scotland ;  had  amber  ever 
existed  in  connection  with  the  Tertiary  beds  of  Mull,  it 
would  have  shared,  in  all  probability,  from  the  close  prox- 
imity of  the  trap,  the  fate  of  the  great  lumps  of  butter 
which  that  giant  in  the  nursery  story  who  used  to  eat 
knights  and  young  ladies,  employed  in  testing  the  heat  of 
his  oven ;  and  so  we  must  look  for  its  place,  not  on  our 
shores,  but  in  the  seas  by  which  they  are  washed.  But  it 
is  here  necessary  that  I  should  submit  to  you  a  brief  out- 
line of  the  structural  geology  of  our  country,  not  only 
that  we  may  know  in  what  direction  to  look  for  its  Ter- 
tiary beds,  but  in  order  also  that  we  may  form  such  an 
acquaintance  with  the  general  framework  of  our  subject, 
as  it  exists  in  space,  as  may  guide  us  in  all  our  after  con- 
ceptions regarding  it.  Avoiding  the  prolixity  of  minute 
detail,  I  shall  present  you  at  present  with  but  a  few  of  the 
Ic.i'ling  lines. 

The  great  central  nucleus  of  Scotland,  presenting  con- 
siderably more  than  fifteen  thousand  square  miles  of  sur- 
face, consists  of  what  we  shall  term,  with  the  elder  geol- 
ogists, primary  rocks,  —  granites,  gneisses,  mica-schists, 
quartz-rocks,  and  clay-slates.  These  extend  in  one  direc- 
tion from  the  southern  base  of  the  Grampians  to  the 
northern  limits  of  Sutherlandshire,  and  from  Peterhead 
and  Aberdeen  on  the  east  to  Glenelg  and  Loch  Carron  on 
the  west.  [N"ow,  around  this  great  primary  mass  there  runs 
a  ring  of  the  sedimentary  fossiliferous  rocks,  somewhat, 
though  of  course  not  with  such  unbroken  regularity,  as  a 
frame  rims  round  a  picture,  or  as  the  metallic  setting  of  a 
('.•uniform  or  pebble  brooch  surrounds  the  stone.  Of 
these  earlier  fossiliferous  rocks,  known  about  the  begin- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  143 

ning  of  the  present  century  as  the  Grauwacke,  and  now 
as  the  Silurians,  the  frame  or  ring  contains  but  fragments, 
—  a  narrow  strip  along  the  flanks  of  the  Grampians  on  the 
south,  and  a  few  detached  patches  along  the  shores  of 
Banff  on  the  north  and  east.  But  the  ring  or  frame  of 
the  next  oldest  fossiliferous  system,  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, is  very  nearly  complete ;  and  to  such  a  breadth  do 
we  find  it  developed,  especially  in  the  southern  and  north- 
ern parts  of  the  inclosing  frame,  that,  with  the  addition  of 
a  few  patches  in  the  border  counties  of  Scotland,  we  find 
it  occupying  nearly  five  thousand  square  miles  of  the  sur- 
face of  our  country.1]  Outside  the  Old  Red  Sandstone 
frame  there  occurs  to  the  south,  in  the  line  of  the  great 
flat  valley  which  runs  across  the  country  from  the  Frith 
of  Forth  to  that  of  the  Clyde,  a  broad  belt  of  the  Coal 
Measures,  —  the  system  which  succeeds  to  it  in  natural 
sequence  ;  but  on  the  east,  west,  and  north,  the  Coal  Meas- 
ures and  New  Red  Sandstone  are  wanting,  and  we  find 
fragments  of  a  ring  of  Lias,  as  at  Applecross,  on  the  one 
coast,  and  at  Cromarty  and  Shandwick  on  the  other ;  and 
outside  the  Lias,  considerable  fragments  of  yet  another 
and  wider  ring  of  the  Oolite.  The  sea  on  the  east  coast, 
and  both  that  and  numerous  outbursts  of  overlying  trap 

1  The  Old  Red  Sandstone  frame,  and  its  corresponding  illustrations,  no 
longer  hold  good.  The  geology  of  north-western  Scotland  has  recently 
been  investigated  by  Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  from  whose  researches  it 
appears  that  Silurian  strata,  occupy  a  much  wider  area  of  that  district  than 
had  been  previously  suspected.  Aided  by  Mr.  Peach's  discovery  of  Lower 
Silurian  fossils  in  the  crystalline  limestones  of  Sutherlandshire,  Sir  Roder- 
ick has  succeeded  in  showing  that  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  German  Ocean 
there  is  a  regular  succession  of  strata  in  ascending  order,  representing  the 
Laurentian  gneiss  of  Canada  and  the  Cambrian  and  Lower  Silurian  rocks 
of  Wales,  and  superposed  upon  these  older  formations  in  the  great  Old 
Red  Sandstone  of  Caithness.  See  the  abstract  of  Sir  Roderick  March  ison's 
paper  in  the  Reports  of  the  Leeds  Meeting  of  the  British  Association.  —  G. 


144  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

on  the  west,  covers  up  the  ring  which  lies  beyond;  but 
the  Chalk  flints  and  Greensand  fossils  of  Aberdeen  and 
Banff  shires,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Chalk  flints  of  Mull 
and  Caithness  on  the  other,  indicate  its  existence  and  its 
components.  An  outer  ring  or  frame  of  Chalk  and  Green- 
sand,  more  or  less  broken,  surrounds  on  two,  mayhap  on 
three  sides,  the  central  nucleus  of  the  kingdom ;  and  were 
the  beds  of  the  German  and  Atlantic  Ocean  to  be  laid  dry 
to  the  depth  of  about  fifty  fathoms,  and  the  area  of  Scot- 
land to  be  proportionally  extended,  you  would  find  for- 
mation succeeding  formation,  in  crossing  the  ring  from  the 
nucleus  outwards,  as  we  find  them  succeeding  each  other 
in  the  south  of  England,  when  crossing  the  country  from 
South  Wales  in  the  direction  of  London.  Beyond  this 
outer  ring  of  Chalk  there  lie,  it  is  more  than  probable, 
deposits  of  the  Tertiary  system.  Of.  the  Mull  deposits  on 
the  west  coast  we  at  least  know,  though  they  occur  in  so 
disturbed  and  overflown  a  district,  that  they  lie  outside 
the  Secondary  deposits  of  the  island;  and  again  on  the 
east  coast,  where  the  Tertiary  deposits,  which  occupy  so 
large  a  portion  of  the  south-eastern  portion  of  England, 
outside  the  Chalk,  lose  themselves  in  the  German  Ocean, 
the  dredge  has  found  interesting  trace  of  them  far  at  sea 
running  northwards,  to  form,  apparently,  our  submarine 
belt  or  ring.  It  is  stated  by  Woodward,  in  his  "  Geology 
of  Norfolk,"  that  the  oyster-fishers  on  that  coast  dredged 
up  from  a  tract  of  oyster-beds  near  Happesburgh  no  fewer 
than  two  thousand  grinders  of  mammoths  in  the  course  of 
thirteen  years.  Further,  those  parts  of  the  Continent 
which  lie  opposite  our  eastern  coasts,  including  Holland, 
Hanover,  and  the  larger  part  of  Denmark,  all  consist  of 
deposits  of  the  Tertiary  system,  which,  trending  westwards 
at  a  low  angle,  form,  it  is  probable,  no  inconsiderable  part 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  145 

of  the  bed  of  the  German  Ocean.  Those  beds,  however, 
from  which  our  Scottish  amber  is  derived  must  lie  deep  in 
the  sea,  outside  the  Lias,  the  Oolite,  the  Greensand,  and 
the  Chalk;  and  our  specimens  are  rare  in  consequence, 
because  at  great  depths  the  bottom  is  little  affected  by 
tempests.  Not  less  than  eight  hundred  pounds  weight  of 
this  substance  has  been  thrown  up  on  the  coast  of  east 
Prussia  by  a  single  storm. 

From  the  Tertiaries  we  would  naturally  pass,  in  our 
upward  progress,  to  the  Secondary  deposits ;  and  of  these, 
the  remains  of  the  Cretaceous  system,  as  exhibited  in 
Banff  and  Aberdeen  shires,  would,  of  course,  first  solicit 
notice,  as  representative  in  Scotland  of  that  portion  of  the 
Secondary  period  nearest  our  own,  —  the  period  with 
which  this  great  middle  division* of  the  earth's  history 
terminated.  I  must  first,  however,  call  your  attention  to 
a  series  of  rocks  which,  without  belonging  to  any  of  the 
three  great  sedimentary  divisions,  seem  in  our  own  coun- 
tiy  to  have  been  contemporary  with  them  all.  I  refer  to 
the  trap  rocks  of  the  kingdom.  The  Duke  of  Argyle 
found  in  the  island  of  Mull,  as  has  been  already  shown, 
thick  beds  of  trap,  tuffacious  and  basaltic,  overlying  beds 
of  the  Tertiary  division.  Again,  in  the  Isle  of  Skye,  Pro- 
fessor Edward  Forbes  has  detected  trap  beds  which  made 
their  way  to  the  surface,  and  overflowed  the  shells  and 
corals  of  the  Oolite,  about  the  middle  of  the  great  Sec- 
ondary period.  "The  thick  sheet  of  imperfectly  columnar 
basalt,"  says  the  Professor,  "  which  has  so  wide  an  exten- 
sion in  the  island  of  Skye,  and  plays  so  important  a  part 
in  the  formation  of  the  magnificent  scenery  of  its  coasts, 
was  the  product  of  a  submarine  eruption,  which,  if  we 
regard  the  basalt  as  an  overflow,  has  its  geological  date 
marked  to  a  nicety,  having  occurred  at  the  close  of  the 

13 


14«j  LKCTURES   ON    GEOLOGY. 

middle  ami  at  the  commencement  of  the  upper  Oolitic 
period."  Yet  again,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Edinburgh, 
as  well  described  by  Mr.  Charles  M'Laren,  there  are  traps 
of  the  Palaeozoic  division,  —  beds  of  stratified  tuff,  as 
among  the  rocks  of  the  Calton  Hill,  for  instance, —  that 
belong  to  the  early  part  of  the  Carboniferous  period ;  and 
I  have  seen  at  Oban  a  conglomerate  low  in  the  Old  Red 
Sandstone,  formed  chiefly  of  a  trap,  which  even  at  that 
early  time  must  have  been  a  surface  rock  much  exposed  to 
denudation.  We  must  regard,  then,  the  trap  rocks  of 
Scotland  as  of  all  ages,  from  the  earlier  Paleozoic  to  the 
middle  Tertiary  periods.  The  great  ganoidal  fishes  of  the 
Devonian  and  Carboniferous  ages,  the  huge  reptiles  of  the 
Oolite,  and  the  gigantic  mammals  of  the  Miocene,  must 
have  been  exposed,  in  turn,  in  what  is  now  Scotland,  to 
deluging  outbursts  of  molten  matter  from  the  vexed  bow- 
els of  the  earth,  and  to  overwhelming  showers  of  volcanic 
ashes. 

I  would,  however,  crave  attention  to  the  curious  fact, 
that  during  this  immensely  protracted  period  of  Plutonic 
activity,  the  deep-seated  agencies  operated  in  nearly  the 
same  lines.  Masses  of  the  incarcerated  matter  seem  to 
have  made  their  escape  age  after  age  along  the  same  weak 
parts  of  their  prison  walls,  —  the  earth's  crust;  and  in 
Scotland  we  have  two  of  those  lines  of  apparent  weakness 
which  converge  in  a  greatly  overflown  district  in  the  north 
of  Ireland.  One  of  these  lines  runs  along  the  inner  Heb- 
rides nearly  south  and  north,  and  includes  in  its  area,  as 
distinct  centres  of  Plutonic  action,  the  islands  of  Skye 
and  of  Mull,  with  what  are  known  as  the  Small  Isles  lying 
between,  and  the  promontory  of  Ardnamurchan.  The 
other  line  sweeps  across  the  country  from  north-ea»t  to 
south-west,  commencing  at  Dunbar  on  the  east,  an  (  ter- 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  147 

minating,  in  Scotland,  with  Arran  and  Campbelton  on  the 
west ;  but  running,  as  I  have  said,  across  the  Irish  Sea,  it 
reappears  in  Ulster.  It  includes,  among  many  lesser  trap 
eminences,  the  Campsie,  the  Ochil,  and  the  Lomond  hills; 
the  eminences  also  on  which  the  castles  of  Stirling  and 
Dumbarton  are  built;  the  hills  which  give  character  to 
the  scenery  around  Edinburgh,  —  Corstorphine,  Blackford, 
the  Pentlands,  the  Castle  rock,  the  Calton,  Salisbury  Crags, 
and  Arthur's  Seat ;  and  far  to  the  east,  that  Haddington 
gioup  of  trap  hills  to  which  North  Berwick  Law,  the  Bass, 
and  the  Isle  of  May  belong.  Beyond  these  great  lines  of 
injected  Cracks  and  filled-up  craters,  especially  to  the 
north  and  east,  there  are  wide  districts  in  Scotland  in 
which  there  does  not  occur  a  single  trap  rock.  The  lava- 
like  flood  found  its  way  to  the  surface  from  the  fiery  depths 
beneath,  through  the  chinks  and  crannies  which  we  now 
find  indicated  by  the  dikes  and  insulated  stacks  and  hills 
of  what  we  may  term  the  Lothian  and  Hebridean  lines, 
and  through  these  only;  and  those  portions  of  the  Low- 
lands of  Scotland  which  lie  to  the  north  of  the  Grampians, 
such  as  the  plains  of  Caithness,  Moray,  and  Easter  Ross, 
present,  from  the  absence  of  the  trap,  an  entirely  different 
character  from  that  exhibited  by  the  Lowlands  of  the 
South. 

The  igneous  rocks  have  been  divided,  according  to  their 
mineral  or  mechanical  character,  into  tuffs,  amygdaloids, 
porphyries,  dolerites,  claystones,  clinkstones,  wackes,  tra- 
chytes, and  various  other  species.  For  our  present  pur- 
pose, however,  and  as  adequate  to  the  demands  of  our 
necessarily  brief  and  imperfect  sketch,  we  may  regard  the 
trap  rocks  as  consisting  of  but  two  great  divisions,  —  first, 
the  traps  proper,  including  all  igneous  masses,  from  the 
porphyries  to  the  basalts,  which  were  ejected  from  the 


148  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

abyss  in  a  molten  form,  and  which  either  overflowed  from 
their  vents  and  craters  certain  portions  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face, whether  subaqueous  or  subaerial,  or,  forcing  their  way 
between  strata  of  the  sedimentary  rocks,  formed  among 
them  dikes,  or  beds,  or  pillar-like  masses;  and  secondly, 
trap-tuffs,  which,  though  igneous  in  their  components,  were 
ejected  from  craters  in  the  form  of  loose  ashes  and  de- 
tached fragments,  or  were  ground  down  by  the  agency  of 
water,  and  subsequently  arranged  in  regular  strata  under 
the  same  laws  which  have  given  their  stratification  to  the 
rocks  of  aqueous  origin  amid  which  we  so  frequently  find 
these  trap-tuffs  intercalated.  You  will  at  otite  see  that 
the  division  here  is  a  natural  one.  There  is  a  wide  differ- 
ence betwixt  a  stratum  of  broken  glass  and  scorias,  the 
debris  of  a  glass-house  arranged  by  the  tide  on  the  beach 
on  which  it  had  been  cast  down  a  few  hours  before,  and  a 
continuous  sheet  of  plate-glass  still  retaining  its  place  in 
the  mould  into  which  it  had  been  run  off  by  sluices  from 
the  furnace.  And  such  is  the  difference  between  trap-tuff 
and  trap  proper.  We  have  to  anive,  too,  when  we  find 
them  occurring,  as  in  this  neighborhood,  among  the  rocks 
of  a  district,  at  very  different  conclusions  regarding  their 
date  and  history.  Without  inquiring  whether  in  some 
rare  instances  an  eruption  of  volcanic  mud  might  not  possi- 
bly be  ejected,  by  a  sort  of  hydraulic-press  process,  between 
strata  of  previously  existing  rock,  and  thus  a  tuff-bed  come 
to  be  formed  which  was  not  only  newer  than  the  stratum 
on  which  it  rested,  but  also  than  that  by  which  it  was 
overlaid,  we  may  receive  it  as  a  general  fact,  that  the  true 
tuff-bed,  like  beds  of  the  ordinary  sedimentary  rocks,  is 
more  modern  than  the  stratum  on  which  it  rests,  and  more 
ancM-nt  than  tin- Mratum  which  overlies  it;  that  if  it  oc- 
cur, for  in>taiK-r,  among  the  Old  lied  Sandstones,  it  belongs 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  149 

to  the  age  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstones ;  if  among  the  Coal 
Measures,  to  the  age  of  the  Coal  Measures ;  and  if  among 
the  Oolites,  to  the  age  of  the  Oolites.  But  we  cannot 
predicate  after  the  same  fashion,  that  the  bed  of  trap 
proper  which  we  find  resting  over  one  series  of  sediment- 
ary strata  and  under  another  is  of  nearly  the  same  age  as 
the  rock  above  and  below,  or  just  a  little  older  than  the 
upper  and  a  little  newer  than  the  nether  ones.  It  may 
have  been  injected  among  them  many  ages  after  their 
deposition,  during  even  an  entirely  different  period  of  the 
earth's  history.  We  may  safely  infer,  that  those  beds  of 
stratified  trap-tuff  which  alternate  in  the  Calton  Hill  with 
beds  of  trap-porphyry  belong  to  the  Carboniferous  period, 
and  are  very  considerably  older  than  the  overlying  sand- 
stones and  shales  on  which  Regent  Terrace  is  built ;  but 
we  can  no  more  infer  that  the  great  bed  of  greenstone 
which  forms  the  picturesque  crown  of  Salisbury  Crags  is 
of  the  same  age  as  the  rocks  among  which  it  occurs,  or, 
more  strictly,  a  little  newer  than  the  strata  below  and  a 
little  older  than  the  strata  above,  than  we  can  infer  that  a 
cast-iron  wheel  or  axle  is  of  the  same  age  as  the  mould  into 
which  it  was  run,  or,  more  strictly,  a  little  newer  than  the 
bottom  of  the  mould,  and  a  little  older  than  the  top  of  it.1 
Let  us  now  devote  a  brief  space  to  the  consideration  of 

1  The  usual  test  of  the  age  of  these  melted  traps  is  the  relation  they 
bear  to  the  rocks  which  overlie  them.  If  the  part  of  the  superjacent  bed 
resting  on  the  igneous  rock  present  an  altered  appearance,  as  if  it  had 
been  more  or  less  baked  in  a  furnace,  the  trap  is  regarded  as  intrusive,  that 
is,  it  forced  its  way  between  the  planes  of  the  strata,  and  must  conse- 
quently be  of  later  age.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  beds  above  display  no 
symptom  of  alteration,  and  more  especially  if  they  consist  of  trap-tuff,  the 
underlying  igneous  rock  may  be  presumed  to  have  been  erupted  either  under 
water  or  in  open  air,  as  the  case  may  be :  and  hence  it  is  regarded  as  in  a 
general  way  contemporaneous  with  the  strata  among  which  it  occurs  —  G. 

13* 


150  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

the  scenery  usually  associated  with  the  trap  rocks,  —  a 
subject  which  should  possess  some  little  interest  to  an 
Edinburgh  audience,  seeing  that  their  most  magnificent 
of  cities  owes  almost  all  that  is  imposing  and  peculiar  in 
its  aspect  and  appearance  to  this  cause.  The  scenery  of 
a  trap  district  may  be  resolved  into  two  components.  In 
an  ancient  ruin  we  frequently  see  stones  hollowed  by  decay 
into  a  sort  of  fantastic  fretwork,  not  very  unlike  that 
which  roughens  some  of  our  more  ancient  runic  obelisks; 
and  we  recognize  as  the  cause  of  these  irregularities  of 
surface  on  which  the  effect  depends,  certain  original  ine- 
qualities in  the  texture  of  the  mass,  and  certain  weather- 
ing influences,  which,  while  they  wrore  away  the  softer  por- 
tions, spared  such  as  were  harder  and  more  durable.  And 
such,  on  a  larger  scale,  are  the  two  elements  operative  in 
the  production  of  the  peculiarities  of  trap  scenery.  The 
hard  trap  rocks  injected  into  the  comparatively  soft  sand- 
stones and  shales  of  a  distiict,  such  as  that  which  sur- 
rounds the  Scottish  capital,  compose  a  mass  of  very  various 
texture  and  solidity,  which,  if  operated  upon  equally  by 
some  power  analogous  to  the  weathering  one  in  the  case 
of  the  fretted  stone,  would  necessarily  yield  unequally ; 
and  the  weathering  influences  we  find  represented  on  the 
large  scale  by  the  denuding  agencies.  The  noble  eminen- 
ces which  give  character  and  individuality  to  our  city 
were  literally  scooped  out  of  the  general  mass  by  tides, 
and  waves,  and  deep-acting  currents,  as  the  sculptor  chis- 
els out  his  figures,  in  executing  some  piece  in  alto  relievo, 
by  chipping  away  the  surrounding  plane.  The  bold  figure 
of  the  poet  Hogg  becomes  almost  a  literality  here : 

"  Who  was  it  scooped  these  stony  waves? 

Who  scalp'U  the  brows  of  old  Cairngorm, 
Am!  dny:  t]lcsp  evcr-yawiiiri'j;  caves? 
'Twas  I,  the  spirit  of  the  storm." 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  151 

The  masses  of  enclosed  trap  are  of  various  forms.  Some- 
times they  occur  as  deeply-based  pillar-like  masses,  filling 
up,  it  is  possible,  ancient  craters.  The  rock  of  hard  clink- 
stone on  which  the  Castle  of  Edinburgh  stands  is  one  of 
these ;  but  the  long-inclined  plane  of  sedimentary  deposits 
which  it  shielded  from  the  wear  of  the  western  current 
interferes  with  its  column-like  outline.  The  Bass  rock  is 
an  example  of  the  same  kind,  with  no  sedimentary  tail  to 
mar  the  effect  of  its  natural  outline.  The  dike  is  another 
and  yet  more  characteristic  form  of  trap  rock :  it  is  a  rock 
that  was  moulded  in  a  longitudinal  crack  or  rent,  as  the 
other  was  moulded  in  a  well-like  crater ;  and  when  the 
original  matrix  in  which  it  was  cast  has  been  washed  from 
its  sides,  and  it  remains  standing  up  over  the  level,  it 
assumes  the  wall-like  or  c&'&e-like  form  to  which  it  owes  its 
name.  In  sailing  along  the  west  coast  of  Scotland  in  a 
clear  sunny  day,  that  gives  to  each  projecting  crag  its 
deep  patch  of  shadow,  these  fragments  of  walls,  of  vastly 
more  ancient  date  than  the  oldest  and  most  venerable  of 
our  Scottish  ruins,  may  be  seen  rising  from  the  beach 
along  the  faces  of  grassy  banks  or  rounded  tuft-formed 
precipices,  and  communicating  to  the  general  scenery  one 
of  its  most  characteristic  features.  But  one  of  the  main 
scenic  peculiarities  of  the  trap  districts  is  derivable  from 
their  trap  beds.  We  find  in  this  neighborhood,  among 
the  hills  of  the  Queen's  Park,  bed  rolled  over  bed,  with 
bands  of  shale,  or  sandstone,  or  soft  trap-tuff,  between; 
and  these  beds,  ranged  often  in  nearly  parallel  lines,  and 
bared  by  the  denuding  agencies,  present  not  unfrequently, 
seen  in  profile,  the  appearance  of  a  flight  of  steps.  Hence 
the  generic  name  for  this  class  of  rocks,  —  trappa,  a  stair : 
the  traps  are  the  stair-like  rocks.  As  seen  in  a  calm,  clear 
morning,  from  nearly  the  eastern  termination  of  Regent 


152  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

Terrace,  the  Arthur  Seat  group  of  hills  exhibits  three 
of  these  beds  ranged  for  considerable  distances  in  nearly 
parallel  lines,  and,  with  these,  well-marked  fragments  of 
several  others.  First,  reckoning  from  the  west  or  south, 
there  is  the  continuous  greenstone  bed  of  Salisbury  crags ; 
next,  the  partially-broken  bed  of  greenstone  porphyry 
known  as  the  Bay  Crag;  next,  the  continuous  bed  of 
compact  greenstone  known  as  the  Hill  Crag,  —  that  along 
the  top  of  which  the  path  ascends  to  the  summit  of  Arthur 
Seat  from  St.  Anthony's  Well ;  and  then  there  are  at  least 
two  beds  of  basalt,  partially  sanded  over,  which  rise  in 
interrupted  steps  along  the  face  of  the  eastern  hill.  These 
beds  fbrm  the  peculiar  feature  of  the  fine  fragment  of  land- 
scape which  from  this  point  of  view  the  Arthur  Seat  group 
of  hills  composes.1  The  trap  scenery  may  be  described 
generally  as  eminently  picturesque.  From  the  circum- 
stance that  its  eruptive  masses  rise  often  from  amid  level 
fields,  and  that  its  hard  abrupt  beds,  dikes,  and  columns, 
alternate  often  with  rich,  soft  strata,  that  decompose  into 
fertile  soils,  it  abounds  in  striking  contrasts.  The  soft 
plain  ascends  often  at  one  stride  into  a  hill  fantastically 
rugged  and  abrupt ;  and  bare  and  fractured  precipices 
overtop  terraced  slopes  or  level  platforms,  rich  in  verdurg. 
Some  of  the  more  famed  scenery  of  England  owes  its 
beauty  to  the  trap  rocks.  Hagley,  the  seat  of  the  Lyttle- 
tons,  so  celebrated  in  the  English  poetry  of  the  last  cen- 
tury for  its  beauty,  is  situated  half  on  a  range  of  pictur- 
esque trap  hills,  half  on  a  level  plain  of  the  New  Red 
Sandstone;  and  the  far-famed  view  from  the  Leasowes 

1  ( >ti  the  west  coast  of  Mull,  and  the  islands  of  Gometra  and  Ulva,  six 
or  eight  of  these  step-like  beds  may  he  seen,  rising  the  one  over  the 
mliiT,  like  terraces  or  stories  in  a  building;  and  the  whole  landscape 
seems  barred  with  right  lines,  that  in  this  district  lie  neurly  parallel  to  the 
horizon. 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  153 

owes  much  of  its  beauty  to  the  traps  of  the  Clent  Hills. 
But  it  would  be  unpardonable,  in  treating,  however 
slightly,  of  the  scenery  of  the  trap,  to  omit  all  refer- 
ence to  one  of  its  strangest  features,  —  those  of  ranges 
of  polygonal  columns  which,  in  at  least  the  more  perfect 
specimens  are  peculiar  to  it,  and  which  impart  to  dame 
Nature,  in  so  many  instances,  those  qualities  of  propor- 
tion and  regularity  in  which  art  alone  can  pretend  to 
vie  with  or  surpass  her.  The  specimens  in  our  own 
neighborhood  are  either  of  small  extent,  as  in  Samson's 
Ribs,  or  both  that  and  of  imperfect  form,  as  at  St.  An- 
thony's Chapel  and  in  the  adjacent  hill-front;  but  I  have 
seen  in  the  neighborhood  of  Linlithgow  a  range  of  slender 
columns  sufficiently  regular  to  have  given  rise  to  a  tra- 
ditional myth  in  the  locality,  that  they  owe  their  origin 
to  the  ingenuity  of  the  old  Picts;  and  the  columned 
scuir  of  Eigg  greatly  surpasses  in  grandeur  the  far-famed 
Giants'  Causeway,  and  scarce  falls  short  of  it  in  the  sym- 
metry of  its  strange  architecture.  To  that  wondrous 
ocean  cave  of  the  west  which  an  enlightened  age  con- 
tinues to  recognize  as  one  of  the  marvels  of  Scotland, 
I  need  but  refer  in  the  graphic  verse  which  the  Ettrick 
Shepherd  has  transferred,  in  his  "Queen's  Wake,"  to 
"Allan  Bawn,  the  bard  of  Mull." 

"  Awed  to  deep  silence,  they  tread  the  strand, 
Where  furnaced  pillars  in  order  stand; 
All  framed  of  the  liquid  burning  levin, 
And  bent  like  the  bow  that  spans  the  heaven; 
Or  upright  ranged,  in  wondrous  array, 
With  purple  of  green  o'er  the  darksome  gray. 
The  solemn  rows  in  that  ocean  den 
Were  dimly  seen  like  the  forms  of  men; 
Like  giant  monks  in  ages  agone, 
Whom  the  god  of  the  ocean  had  sear'd  to  stone ; 
And  their  path  was  on  wondrous  pavement  old, 
In  blocks  all  cast  in  some  giant  mould." 


154  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

The  old  scenery  of  the  trap  rocks  of  Scotland,  —  the 
scenery  associated  with  them  when  our  country,  along  at 
least  its  two  great  lines  of  trappean  eruption,  was  a  Terra 
del  Fuego,  —  a  land  of  fire, —  it  would  require  some  of 
that  poetic  faculty  to  restore  which  I  would  fain  challenge 
for  the  geologist.  Even  in  the  immediate  neighborhood 
of  the  capital,  the  rocky  crust  of  the  earth  has  been 
heaved  into  vast  waves  by  the  imprisoned  Plutonic  agen- 
cies struggling  for  vent;  huge  floods  of  molten  matter, 
now  hardened  into  mountain  masses,  have  been  injected 
with  earthquake  throes  between  the  folds  of  the  stony 
strata;  and  a  submarine  volcano  has  darkened  the  heavens 
with  its  ashes,  shutting  out  during  the  day  the  light  of 
the  sun,  and  throwing  its  red  gleam,  when  the  night  had 
fallen,  over  the  steaming  eddies  of  a  boiling  and  broken 
sea.  The  area  which  we  now  occupy  has  heaved  like  the 
deck  of  a  storm-beset  vessel;  the  solid  earth  has  been 
rent  asunder;  and  through  the  wide  cracks  and  fissures, 
now  existing  as  greenstone  dikes,  the  red  molten  matter 
has  come  rushing  through.  Could  we  this  evening  ascend 
into  the  remote  past,  when  that  picturesque  eminence 
which  overlooks  Edinburgh,  —  according  to  the  poet 
Malcolm, 

"  Arthur's  craggy  bulk, 
That  dweller  of  the  air,  abrupt  and  lone," — 

was,  like  the  son  of  Semele,  first  ushered  into  the  world 
amid  smoke  and  flame,  you  would  find  the  scene  such 
as  poets  might  well  desire  to  contemplate,  or  solicit  the 
aid  of  their  muse  adequately  to  describe.  For  many  ages, 
\vliat  now  exists  as  the  picturesque  tract  of  hill  and  valley 
attached  to  old  Holyrood,  and  to  which  the  privileges 
of  the  court  still  extend,  had  existed  as  a  tract  of  shallow 
sea,  darkened,  when  the  tide  fell,  by  algae-covered  rocks 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  155 

and  banks,  and  much  beaten  by  waves.  From  time  im- 
memorial has  the  portion  of  the  earth's  crust  which  under- 
lies that  shallow  sea  been  a  scene  of  deep-seated  igneous 
action.  Vast  beds  of  trappean  rock — greenstone,  and 
columnar  basalt,  and  amygdaloidal  porphyry  —  have  been 
wedged  from  beneath,  as  molten  injections,  between  the 
old  sedimentary  strata;  vast  waves  of  translation  have 
come  rolling  onwards  from  that  disturbed  centre,  as  some 
submarine  hill,  elevated  by  the  force  of  the  fiery  injection 
—  as  the  platform  of  a  hydraulic  press  is  elevated  when 
the  pump  is  plied  —  has  raised  its  broad  back  over  the 
tide,  only,  however,  to  yield  piecemeal  to  the  denuding 
currents  and  the  storm-raised  surf  of  centuries.  And 
now,  for  day  after  day  has  there  been  a  succession  of 
earthquake  shocks,  that,  as  the  plutonic  paroxysm  in- 
creases in  intensity,  become  stronger  and  more  frequent, 
and  the  mountain  waves  roll  outwards  in  ever-widening 
circles,  to  rise  and  fall  in  distant  and  solitary  seas,  or 
to  break  in  long  lines  of  foam  on  nameless  islands  un- 
known to  the  geographer.  And  over  the  roar  of  waves  or 
the  rush  of  tides  we  may  hear  the  growlings  of  a  subter- 
ranean thunder,  that  now  dies  away  in  low,  deep  mutter- 
ings,  and  now,  ere  some  fresh  earthquake-shock  tempests 
the  sea,  bellows  wildly  from  the  abyss.  The  billows .  fall 
back  in  boiling  eddies;  the  solid  strata  are  upheaved 
into  a  flat  dome,  crusted  with  corals  and  shells ;  it  cracks, 
it  severs,  a  dark  gulf  yawns  suddenly  in  the  midst;  a 
dense,  strongly  variegated  cloud  of  mingled  smoke  and 
steam  arises  black  as  midnight  in  its  central  volumes, 
but  chequered,  where  the  boiling  waves  hiss  at  its  edge, 
with  wreaths  of  white ;  and  anon  with  the  noise  of  many 
waters,  a  broad  sheet  of  flame  rushes  upwards  a  thousand 
fathoms  into  the  sky.  Vast  masses  of  molten  rock,  that 


156  LECTURES  ON   GEOLOGY. 

glow  red  amid  even  the  light  of  day,  are  hurled  into  the 
air,  and  then,  with  hollow  sound,  fall  back  into  the  chasm, 
or,  descending  hissing  amid  the  vexed  waters,  fling  high 
the  hot  spray,  and  send  the  cross  circlets  of  wave  which 
they  raise  athwart  the  heavings  of  the  huger  billows  pro- 
pelled from  the  disturbed  centre  within.  The  crater  rises 
as  the  thick  showers  of  ashes  descend;  and  amid  the 
rending  of  rocks,  the  roaring  of  flames,  the  dashings  of 
waves,  the  hissings  of  submerged  lava,  and  the  hollow 
grumblings  of  the  abyss,  the  darkness  of  a  starless  night 
descends  upon  the  deep.  Anon,  and  we  are  startled  by 
the  shock  of  yet  another  and  more  terrible  earthquake ; 
yet  another  column  of  flame  rushes  into  the  sky,  casting  a 
lurid  illumination  on  the  thick  rolling  reek  and  the  pitchy 
heavings  of  the  wave;  seen  but  for  a  moment,  we  may 
mark  the  silvery  glitter  of  scales,  for  there  is  a  shoal  of 
dead  fish  floating  past;  and  as  the  coruscations  of  an 
electric  lightning  darts  in  a  thousand  fiery  tongues  from 
the  cloud,  some  startled  monster  of  the  deep  bellows  in 
terror  from  the  dank  sea  beyond. 

Let  us  raise  the  curtain  once  more  from  over  the  past  of 
the  trap  districts  of  Scotland.  Myriads  of  ages  have 
come  and  gone ;  the  submarine  volcano  has  been  long 
extinguished ;  and  the  land,  elevated  high  over  the  waters, 
has  become  a  scene  of  human  habitation.  But  the  wild 
country,  marked  by  the  well-known  features  of  abrupt 
precipitous  hill  and  deep  retiring  valley,  is  roughened 
by  many  a  shaggy  wood,  and  gleams  with  many  a  blue 
lochan,  and  even  its  richer  plains  are  but  partially  broken 
up  by  the  plough.  And  lo !  the  trappean  centres  of  the 
district  are  scenes  of  fierce  war,  as  of  old ;  but  it  is  not 
the  dead  uninformed  elements,  —  fire,  earth,  and  water,  — 
but  energetic,  impassioned  man,  that  now  contends,  and 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  157 

in  fierce  warfare  battles,  with  his  kind.  Yonder,  on  its 
trap  rock,  once  the  crater  of  a  volcano,  is  the  fortress  of 
the  Bass,  the  stronghold  that  last  surrendered  in  Britain 
to  William  of  Nassau;  and  yonder,  on  its  trap  rock, 
the  castle  of  Dunbar,  that  brave  black  Agnes  held  out 
in  so  determined  a  spirit  against  the  English  ;  and  yonder, 
on  its  trap  rock,  the  castle  of  Dirleton,  which  stood  siege 
in  behalf  of  our  country  against  Edward  I. ;  and  yonder, 
on  its  trap  rock,  scaled  by  Lord  Randolph  of  old  when  he 
warred  for  the  Bruce,  is  the  castle  of  Edinburgh,  the 
scene  of  a  hundred  fights,  and  surrounded  by  the  halo 
of  a  thousand  historic  associations;  and  yonder,  on  its 
trap  rock,  is  the  castle  of  Stirling,  with  the  battle-ground 
of  Scotland  at  its  feet,  and  to  maintain  which  against 
the  greatest  of  our  Scottish  kings,  the  second  Edward 
vainly  fought  the  battle  of  Bannockburn ;  and  yonder,  on 
its  trap  rock,  is  the  castle  of  Dumbarton,  long  impregna- 
ble, but  which  the  soldier  of  the  Reformation  won  at  such 
fearful  risk  from  the  partisans  of  Mary.  I  remember  at 
one  time  deeming  it  not  a  little  curious  that  the  early 
geological  history  of  a  country  should  often,  as  in  this 
instance,  seem  typical  of  its  subsequent  civil  history.  If 
a  country's  geologic  history  had  been  very  disturbed,  —  if 
the  trap  rock  had  broken  out  from  below,  and  tilted  up  its 
strata  in  a  thousand  abrupt  angles,  steep  precipices,  and 
yawning  chasms,  I  found  the  chances  as  ten  to  one  that 
there  succeeded,  when  man  came  upon  the  scene,  a  his- 
tory, scarce  less  disturbed,  of  fierce  Wai's,  protracted  sieges, 
and  desperate  battles.  The  stormy  morning  during  which 
merely  the  angry  elements  had  contended,  I  found  suc- 
ceeded in  almost  every  instance  by  a  stormy  day,  mad- 
dened by  the  turmoil  of  human  passion.  But  a  little  re-: 
flection  dissipated  the  mystery ;  though  it  served  to  show 

14 


158  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

through  what  immense  periods  mere  physical  causes  may 
continue  to  operate  with  moral  effect,  and  how,  in  the 
purposes  of  Him  who  saw  the  end  from  the  beginning,  a 
scene  of  fiery  confusion  —  of  roaring  waves  and  heaving 
earthquakes,  of  ascending  hills  and  deepening  valleys  — 
may  have  been  closely  associated  with  the  right  develop- 
ment and  ultimate  dignity  and  happiness  of  the  moral 
agent  of  creation,  —  unborn  at  the  time,  —  reasoning,  re- 
sponsible man.  It  is  amid  these  centres  of  geologic  dis- 
turbance, the  natural  strongholds  of  the  earth,  that  the 
true  battles  of  the  race,  the  battles  of  civilization  and  civil 
liberty,  have  been  successfully  maintained  by  handfuls  of 
hardy  men,  against  the  despot-led  myriads  of  the  plains. 
In  glancing  over  a  map  of  Europe  and  the  countries 
adjacent,  on  which  the  mountain  groups  are  marked,  you 
will  at  once  perceive  that  Greece  and  the  Holy  Land, 
Scotland  and  the  Swiss  cantons,  formed  centres  of  great 
plutonic  disturbance  of  this  character.  They  had  each 
their  geologic  tremors  and  perturbations,  —  their  pro- 
tracted periods  of  eruption  and  earthquake,  —  long  ere 
their  analogous  civil  history,  with  its  ages  of  convulsion 
and  revolution,  in  which  man  was  the  agent,  had  yet  com- 
menced its  course.  And,  indirectly  at  least,  the  disturbed 
civil  history  was  in  each  instance  a  consequence  of  the 
disturbed  geologic  one. 

From  the  Tertiary  deposits  we  pass  direct  to  the  few 
scattered  remains  which  survive  in  Scotland  of  the  Cre- 
taceous period.  It  is  now  nearly  thirty  years  since  it  was 
found  by  geologists  that  chalk  flints  inclosing  in  many 
specimens  the  peculiar  organisms  of  the  system,  occur  in 
the  superficial  deposits  of  Banff  and  Aberdeenshires ;  and 
about  three  years  ago  they  were  also  discovered  by  a  very 
ingenious  man,  a  Thurso  tradesman,  Mr.  Robert  Dick,  in 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  159 

the  boulder-clays  of  Caithness.  It  is,  however,  a  curious 
fact,  that  what  the  geologist  has  only  come  to  know  within 
the  course  of  the  present  generation  was  well  known  to 
the  wild  aboriginal  inhabitants  of  the  country  some  three 
or  four  thousand  years  ago.  Well-nigh  one  half  the 
ancient  arrow  and  smaller  javelin  heads  of  the  stone- 
period  in  Scotland,  especially  those  found  to  the  north 
of  the  Grampians,  were  fashioned  out  of  the  yellow  Aber- 
deenshire  flints.  A  history  of  those  arts  of  savage  life 
which  the  course  of  discovery  served  to  supplant  and 
obliterate,  but  which  could  not  be  carried  on  without  a 
knowledge  of  substances  and  qualities  afterwards  lost, 
until  re-discovered  by  scientific  curiosity,  would  form  an 
exceedingly  curious  one.  On  finding,  a  good  many  years 
ago,  a  vein  of  a  bituminous  jet  in  one  of  the  ichthyolite 
beds  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  Ross,  —  beds  unknown 
at  the  time  to  even  our  first  geologists,  —  it  curiously 
impressed  me  to  remember  that  my  discovery  was,  after 
all,  only  a  discovery  at  second-hand ;  for  that  in  an  un- 
glazed  hand-made  urn  of  apparently  a  very  early  period, 
dug  up  in  the  neighborhood  only  a  few  years  before, 
there  had  been  found  a  very  primitive  necklace,  fashioned 
out  of  evidently  the  same  jet.  It  would  seem  that  to 
these  ichthyolite  beds,  unknown  at  the  time  in  the  distnct 
to  all  but  myself,  the  savage  inhabitants  had  had  recourse 
for  the  materials  for  their  rude  ornaments  thousands  of 
years  before.  They  were  mineralogists  enough,  too,  as 
their  stone  hatchets  and  battle-axes  testify,  to  know  where 
the  best  tool  and  weapon-making  rocks  occur ;  and  I  once 
found  in  a  northern  locality  a  battle-axe  of  an  exceeding 
strong  and  tough  variety  of  indurated  talc,  that  nearly 
approached  in  character  to  the  axe-stone  of  Werner,  which, 
if  native  to  Scotland  at  all,  is  so  in  some  primary  district 


160  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

which  I  am  not  mineralogist  enough  to  indicate.  It 
shows  us  after  how  strange  a  fashion  extremes  may 
meet,  —  that  rude  savages,  ignorant  of  the  use  of  the 
metals,  and  the  scientific  explorers  of  a  highly  civilized 
age,  rationally  desirous  to  know  how  the  adorable  Creator 
wrought  upon  this  earth  of  old,  ere  man  had  yet  entered 
upon  it  as  a  scene  of  probation,  should  have  formed  an 
acquaintance  with  the  same  class  of  objects,  —  classes  of 
objects  of  which  the  men  of  an  intervening  period  knew 
nothing. 

The  chalk  fragments  and  flints  of  Caithness  and  Banff 
seem  to  have  been  earned  eastward  on  the  occidental 
current  of  the  Pleistocene  period,  —  those  of  the  one 
county  from  that  western  portion  of  the  chalk  ring  or 
girdle  to  which  I  have  already  referred  as  lying  in  the 
Atlantic,  and  those  of  the  other  from  that  eastern  portion 
of  the  ring  which  is  buried  in  the  outer  reaches  of  the 
Moray  Frith.  In  Aberdeenshire,  however,  some  twenty 
miles  or  so  to  the  north  of  the  city,  in  the  parish  of  Ellon 
and  some  of  the  contiguous  parishes,  and  running  at  a 
considerable  distance  inland  in  a  line  nearly  parallel  to 
the  coast,  the  flints  so  abound,  and,  unlike  those  of  the 
English  gravels,  are  so  little  water- worn  as  to  give  evi- 
dence that  they  must  have  been  derived  from  the  disinte- 
gration of  outliers  of  the  system  that  once  existed,  it  is 
probable,  in  their  immediate  neighborhood.  They  over- 
lie, too,  in  some  parts  of  this  locality,  what  seems  to  be  a 
re-formation  of  the  greensand ;  of  which  the  soft,  inco- 
herent masses,  containing,  as  they  do,  in  some,  in  a  good 
state  of  keeping,  some  of  the  more  fragile  organisms  of 
the  deposit,  could  not  possibly  have  travelled  far.  The 
ill  <-f  our  chalk  flints  and  of  the  underlying  greensnnd 
•ire  sufficiently  numerous  and  characteristic  to  serve  the 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  161 

purpose  of  identifying  the  worn  and  scattered  deposits  in 
which  they  occur  with  the  amply  developed  chalks  and 
greensands  of  England,  but  perhaps  not  sufficiently  so,  nor 
yet  always  in  a  sufficiently  fine  state  of  preservation,  to 
render  the  district  a  very  hopeful  scene  of  labor  to  the  col- 
lector desirous  absolutely  to  extend  our  knowledge  of  the 
extinct  forms  of  life.  I  have  seen,  however,  especially  in 
the  collections  of  Dr.  Fleming,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Longmuir,  of 
Aberdeen,  and  Mr.  Fergusson,  of  Glasgow,  fine  and  very 
characteristic  specimens  of  the  Scotch  Chalk,  —  delicate 
flustra  sponges  and  corals  locked  up  in  flint,  —  well- 
marked  portions  of  the  sea-egg  order  (Echinidae)  belong- 
ing to  the  cidarite,  galerite,  and  spatangus  families, — 
terebratulae  of  various  species,  —  good  specimens  of  that 
very  characteristic  conchifer  of  the  Chalk,  the  Inoceramus, 
—  with  casts  of  minute  belemnites  and  portions  of  ammo- 
nites and  baculites.  The  group  of  remains  preserved  is 
unequivocally  that  of  the  Cretaceous  fauna,  just  as  Scot- 
land has  also  a  group  of  archaeological  remains  decidedly 
Roman  ;  though  in  cither  case  these  remains  serve  but  for 
purposes  of  identification  with  larger  groups  elsewhere : 
and  in  order  thoroughly  to  study  either  the  one  or  the 
other,  the  antiquary  or  geologist  would  have  to  remove 
from  what  is  equally  the  outskirts  of  the  old  Roman  or 
old  Cretaceous  empire,  towards  its  centre  in  the  south. 

All  our  geologists  agree  in  holding  that  the  Chalk  was 
deposited  in  an  ocean  of  very  considerable  depth,  and  of 
such  extent  that  it  must  have  covered  for  many  ages  the 
greater  part  of  what  is  now  southern  and  central  Europe. 
It  has  been  traced  in  one  direction  from  the  north  of  Ire- 
land to  the  Crimea  in  Southern  Russia,  a  distance  of  about 
twelve  hundred  miles ;  and  in  another  direction  from  the 
south  of  Sweden  to  the  southwest  of.  France,  a  distance  of 

14* 


162  LECTURES  OX  GEOLOGY. 

about  nine  hundred  miles ;  and  there  are  extensive  districts 
both  in  France  and  England  where  it  attains  to  an  average 
thickness  of  not  less  than  a  thousand  feet.  The  only  anal- 
ogous deposit  of  the  present  time  occurs  on  comparatively 
a  small  scale  among  the  coralline  reefs  and  lagoons  of  the 
Pacific,  where  there  is  in  the  act  of  forming  an  impalpable 
white  mud  derived  from  the  corals,  which  in  dried  speci- 
mens cannot  be  distinguished  by  the  unassisted  eye  from 
masses  of  soft  chalk.  But  what  chiefly  distinguishes  the 
true  chalk  from  any  of  its  modern  representatives  is  the 
amazing  number  of  microscopic  animals  which  it  contains. 
On  a  low  estimate,  half  its  entire  bulk  is  composed  of 
animalculites  of  such  amazing  minuteness,  that  it  has  been 
calculated  by  Ehrenberg  that  each  cubic  inch  of  chalk  may 
contain  upwards  of  a  million  of  the  shells  of  these  crea- 
tuivs.  The  chalk  rocks  so  characteristic  of  the  sister  king- 
dom have  been  often  sung  by  the  poets  as 

"  Rising  like  white  ramparts  all  along 
The  blue  sea's  border." 

And,  in  especial,  one  "  chalky  bourn  of  dread  and  dizzy 
summit "  has  been  made  by  the  greatest  of  poets  the  sub- 
ject of  the  sublimest  description  of  a  giddy,  awe-inspiring 
precipice  ever  drawn.  And  here  is  there  a  new  associa- 
tion with  which  to  connect  the  chalk  cliffs  of  England. 
Every  fragment  of  these  cliffs  was  once  associated  with 
animal  life;  that  impalpable  white  dust  which  gives  a 
milky  hue  to  the  waves  as  they  dash  against  them,  consists 
of  curiously  organized  skeletons ;  even  the  white  line  which 
I  draw  along  the  board,  were  our  eyes  to  be  suddenly 
endowed  with  a  high  microscopic  power,  would  resem- 
ble part  of  the  wall  of  a  grotto  covered  over  with  shells. 
And,  embedded  in  this  mass  of  minute,  nicely-framed 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  163 

invisibilities,  —  Polythalamia,  Foraminifera,  Polyporia,  and 
Diatoraaceae,  —  we  find  fossils  of  larger  size,  such  as  >Spa- 
tangus-cor  and  the  spiny  Plagiostoma,  which  seem  to 
have  found  proper  habitats  in  the  mud  formed  by  the 
dead  remains  of  these  animalculae.  Curious  examples  of 
a  similar  kind  may  be  still  seen  among  the  Hebrides,  of 
sand-burrowing  molluscs  and  echinoderms  finding  habitats 
amid  accumulations  of  the  debris  of  organic  life,  chiefly 
comminuted  shells,  on  coasts  where  otherwise  there  could 
have  been  no  place  for  them.  The  deep-sea  shells  pro- 
pelled shorewards  by  the  agency  of  tides  and  waves  are 
ground  down  by  the  action  of  the  surf  against  the  rocks. 
They  may  be  seen  occurring  in  the  hollows  of  the  skerries, 
as  one  passes  shorewards  along  some  of  the  rocky  bays, 
in  handfuls  of  more  and  more  comminuted  fragments,  just 
as,  in  passing  along  the  successive  vats  of  a  paper-mill,  one 
finds  the  linen  rags  more  and  more  disintegrated  by  the 
cylinders ;  and  then,  within  some  sheltering  shelf  or  ledge, 
we  find  the  gathered  handfuls  of  former  ages  spreading 
into  a  wave-rippled  beach  of  minute  shelly  particles,  that 
presents,  save  in  its  snow-white  color,  the  appearance  of 
sandy  beaches  of  the  ordinary  mineral  components.  But 
the  beach  once  formed  in  this  way  soon  begins  to  receife 
accessions  from  the  exuvia?  of  animals  that  love  such 
localities,  —  spatangi,  razor-fish,  cockles,  and  the  several 
varieties  of  the  gaper  family,  —  and  that  enjoy  life  agree- 
ably to  their  natures  and  constitutions,  not  the  least  sad- 
dened by  the  idea  that  they  are  living  amid  the  rubbish  of 
a  charnel-house  ;  and  sometimes  one-half  the  whole  beach 
comes  thus  to  be  composed  of  a  class  of  remains  that,  save 
for  the  previous  existence  of  the  other  half  of  it,  could  not 
have  been  formed  in  such  localities  at  all.  Now,  such 
must  have  been  the  state  of  matters  in  the  times  of  the 


1G4  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

Chalk.  Unnumbered  millions  must  have  died  in  order 
that  the  medium  might  be  provided  in  which  a  class  of 
their  successors  could  alone  live.  Of  the  land  which 
skirted  this  ocean  of  the  Chalk,  or  of  its  productions,  we 
know  almost  nothing.  There  have  been  found  in  Chalk 
flints  a  few  fragments  of  silicified  wood,  and,  in  one  or  two 
instances,  the  cones  of  cycadaceous  plants;  and  the  upper 
beds  of  the  system  have  furnished  the  remains  of  a  gigan- 
tic lizard,  —  the  Mosasaurus,  with  those  of  turtles,  tor- 
toises, and  Pterodactyls.  True,  the  Mosasaurus  may  have 
been,  as  Cuvier  supposed,  a  marine  reptile,  and  the  turtles 
must  have  been  so ;  but  then  both,  as  egg-bearing  animals, 
must  have  brought  forth  their  young  on  some  shore ;  and 
the  tortoises,  with  the  Pterodactyl  or  flying  lizard,  must  be 
regarded  as  decidedly  terrestrial.  Such  is  almost  all  we 
yet  know  of  the  flora  or  fauna  of  the  land  of  the  Chalk ; 
whereas  in  marine  organisms  the  system  is  so  exceedingly 
rich,  that  its  ascertained  species  amount,  we  find  it  stated 
by  Brown,  to  about  three  thousand.  The  geologic  dio- 
rama abounds  in  strange  contrasts.  When  the  curtain  last 
rose  upon  our  country,  we  looked  abroad  over  the  amber- 
producing  forests  of  the  Tertiary  period,  with  their  sunlit 
glades  and  brown  and  bosky  recesses,  and  we  saw,  far  dis- 
tant on  the  skirts  of  the  densely  wooded  land,  a  fire-belch- 
ing volcano,  over-canopied  by  its  cloud  of  smoke  and 
ashes.  And  now,  when  the  curtain  again  rises,  we  see 
the  same  tract  occupied,  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  by  a 
broad  ocean,  traversed  by  a  pale  milky  line,  that  wends  its 
dimpling  way  through  the  blue  expanse,  like  a  river  through 
a  meadow.  That  milky  way  of  turbid  water  indicates  the 
course  of  a  deep-setting  current,  that  disturbs,  far  beneath, 
the  impalpable  mud  of  the  Chalk.  Sailing  molluscs  career 
in  their  galleys  of  pearl  over  the  surface  of  this  ancient 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  165 

sea ;  fishes  of  long  extinct  species  dart  with  sudden  gleam 
through  its  middle  depths;  and  far  below,  on  its  white 
floor,  the  sea  urchin  creeps,  and  the  spatangus  burrows, 
and  crania  and  terebratulae  have  cast  anchor,  and  the 
Crista  Galli  (or  carinated  oyster)  opens  its  curiously 
plicated  valves,  carved  with  the  zigzag  mouldings  of  a 
Norman  doorway,  and  the  flower-like  marsupite  expands 
its  living  petals.  And,  dim  and  distant  in  the  direction 
of  the  future  Grampians,  we  may  espy  a  cloud-enveloped 
island ;  but  such  is  its  remoteness,  and  such  the  enveloping 
haze,  that  we  can  know  little  more  than  that  it  bears  along 
its  shores  and  on  its  middle  heights  a  forest  of  nameless 
trees,  unchronicled  by  the  fossil  botanist. 

In  bringing  to  a  close  this  part  of  my  subject,  let  me 
here  remark,  that,  if  we  except  the  obscure  and  humbly 
organized  diatomaceae, —  a  microscopic  family  of  organ- 
isms which  some  of  our  authorities  deem  animal  and  some 
vegetable,  and  of  which  hundreds  and  thousands  would 
find  ample  room  in  a  single  drop  of  water,  —  we  have 
now  reached  a  point  in  the  history  of  our  country,  in 
which  there  existed  no  species  of  plant  or  animal  that 
exists  at  the  present  time.  Not  a  reptile,  fish,  mollusc,  or 
zoophyte  of  the  Cretaceous  system  continues  to  live.  We 
know  that  it  is  appointed  for  all  individuals  once  to  die, 
whatever  their  tribe  or  family,  because  hitherto  all  indi- 
viduals have  died ;  and  Geology,  by  extending  our  expe- 
rience, shows  us  that  the  same  fate  awaits  on  species  as  on 
the  individuals  that  compose  them.  In  the  one  case,  too, 
as  in  the  other,  death  has  its  special  laws;  but  the  laws 
which  determine  the  life  and  death  of  species  seem  widely 
different  from  those  which  regulate  the  life  and  death  of 
individuals  and  generations.  In  general,  and  with  but  a 
few  exceptions  in  favor  of  the  cold-blooded  division  of  the 


1C(3  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

vertebrata,  the  higher  order  of  animals  live  longest.  A 
man  may'  survive  for  a  hundred  years;  an  ephemera 
bursts  from  its  shell  in  the  morning,  and  dies  at  night. 
But  it  is  far  otherwise  with  the  higher  orders  of  species. 
Molluscs  and  corals  outlive  the  vertebrata ;  and  tribes  of 
the  low  infusory  animals  outlive  molluscs  and  corals.  We 
know  not  that  a  single  shell  of  at  least  the  latter  Pleis- 
tocene period  has  become  extinct ;  but  many  of  its  noblest 
quadrupeds,  such  as  the  Irish  elk,  the  cave-bear,  tiger,  and 
hyena,  and  the  northern  rhinoceros,  hippopotamus,  and 
elephant,  exist  no  longer.  And  as  we  rise  into  the  remote 
past,  and  take  farewell,  one  after  one,  of  even  the  lower 
forms,  —  shells  and  corals,  —  and  get  into  a  formation  all 
of  whose  visible  organisms  are  old-fashioned  and  extinct, 
we  apply  the  microscope  to  its  impalpable  dust,  and  again, 
among  still  humbler  and  lowlier  shapes,  find  ourselves  in 
the  presence  of  the  familiar  and  the  recent.  In  another 
sense  than  that  which  the  old  poet  contemplated,  we  learn 
from  the  history  of  species  that  the  most  lowly  are  the 
most  safe. 

"  The  tallest  pines  feel  most  the- power 

Of  wintry  blasts :  the  loftiest  tower 
Comes  heaviest  to  the  ground. 

The  bolts  that  spare  the  mountain  side 

His  cloud-cap't  eminence  divide, 
And  spread  the  ruin  round." 

How  long  some  of  these  extinct  species  may  have  lived 
we  know  not,  and  may  never  know ;  but  in  all  cases  their 
term  of  existence  must  have  been  very  extended.  Even 
the  extinct  elephant  lived  long  enough  as  a  species  to 
whiten  the  plains  of  Siberia  with  huge  bones,  and  to  form 
quarries  of  ivory  that  have  furaished  the  ivory  market 
for  year  after  year  with  its  largest  supplies.  And  of  some 
of  the  humbler  species  of  animals,  the  period  during  which 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  167 

they  have  continued  to  live  must  have  been  vastly  more 
protracted.  Cyprina  Islandica  seems  to  have  come  into 
existence  at  least  as  early  as  the  fossil  elephant ;  and  now, 
thousands  of  years  after  the  boreal  pachyderm  is  gone,  the 
boreal  shell  still  exists  by  millions,  and  evinces  no  symp- 
tom of  decline.  And  yet,  since  the  commencement  of  the 
great  Tertiary  division,  series  of  shells,  as  hardy,  appar- 
ently, as  Cyprina,  have  in  succession  come  into  being,  and 
then  ceased  to  be.  The  period  over  which  we  have  passed 
includes  generations  of  species.  But  there  was  space 
enough  for  them  all  in  the  bygone  eternity.  It  has  some- 
times appeared  to  me  as  if,  from  our  own  weak  inability 
to  conceive  of  the  upper  reaches  of  that  awful  tide  of 
continuity  which  had  no  beginning,  and  of  which  the 
measured  shreds  and  fragments  constitute  time,  we  had 
become  jealous  lest  even  God  Himself  should  have  wrought 
in  it  during  other  than  a  brief  and  limited  space,  with 
which  our  small  faculties  could  easily  grapple. 

"  Oh,  who  can  strive 
To  comprehend  the  vast,  the  awful  truth 
Of  the  eternity  that  hath  gone  by, 
And  not  recoil  from  the  dismaying  sense 
Of  human  impotence!    The  life  of  man 
Is  summed  in  birthdays  and  in  sepulchres, 
But  the  eternal  God  had  no  beginning." 

There  are  two  great  infinites,  —  the  infinite  in  space 
and  the  infinite  in  time.  It  were  well,  surely,  to  be  hum- 
ble enough  to  acknowledge  it  accordant  to  all  analogy, 
that  as  He  who  inhabits  eternity  has  filled  the  one  limit- 
less void  —  that  of  space  —  with  world  upon  world  and 
system  upon  system,  far  beyond  the  reach  of  human  ken, 
He  should  also  have  wrought  in  the  other  limitless  world 
—  that  of  time  —  for  age  after  age,  and  period  after  period, 
far  beyond  the  reach  of  human  conception. 


LECTURE  FOURTH. 

The  Continuity  of  Existence  twice  broken  in  Geological  History  — The  Three 
great  Geological  Divisions  representative  of  three  independent  Orders  of  Ex- 
i-U'iices  —  Origin  of  the  Wealden  in  England  —  Its  great  Depth  and  High 
Antiquity —  The  question  whether  the  Weald  Formation  belongs  to  the  Creta- 
ceous or  the  Oolitic  System  determined  in  favor  of  the  latter  by  its  Position  in 
Scotland  —  Its  Organisms,  consisting  of  both  Salt  and  Fresh  Water  Animals, 
indicative  of  its  Fluviatilc  Origin,  but  in  proximity  to  the  Ocean — The  Out- 
liers of  the  Weald  in  Morayshire— Their  Organisms  — The  Sabbath-  Stone  of  the 
Northumberland  Coal  Pits  —  Origin  of  its  Name — The  Framework  of  Scot- 
land—  The  Conditions  under  which  it  may  have  been  formed  —  The  Lias  and 
the  Oolite  produced  by  the  last  great  Upheaval  of  its  Northern  Mountains  — 
The  Line  of  Elevation  of  the  Lowland  Counties  —  Localities  of  the  Oolitic 
Deposits  of  Scotland  —  Its  Flora  and  Fauna  —  History  of  one  of  its  Pine 
Trees—  Its  Animal  Organisms  —  A  Walk  into  the  Wilds  of  the  Oolite  Hills  of 
Sutherland. 

THE  mystic  thread,  with  its  three  strands  of  black, 
white,  and  gray,  spun  by  the  sybil  in  "  Guy  Mannering," 
formed,  she  said,  a  "full  hank,  but  not  a  haill  ane:"  the 
lengthened  tale  of  years  which  it  symbolized  "  was  thrice 
broken  and  thrice  to  asp."  I  have  sometimes  thought  of 
that  wonderfully  mingled  and  variously  colored  thread  of 
existence  which  descends  from  the  earliest  periods  known 
to  the  geologist  down  to  our  own  times,  as  not  unaptly 
represented  by  that  produced  on  this  occasion  from  the 
spindle  of  the  gipsy.  "We  find,  in  its  general  tissue,  species 
interlaced  with  and  laying  hold  of  species,  as,  in  the  thread, 
fibre  is  interlaced  with  and  lays  hold  of  fibre ;  and  as  by 
this  arrangement  the  fibres,  though  not  themselves  continu- 
ous, but  of  very  limited  length,  form  a  continuous  cord,  so 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  169 

species  of  limited  duration,  that  at  certain  parts  in  the 
course  of  time  began  to  be,  and  at  certain  other  parts 
became  extinct,  form  throughout  immensely  extended 
periods  a  continuous  cord  of  existence.  New  species  had 
come  into  being  ere  the  old  ones  dropped  away  and  disap- 
peared ;  and  there  occurred  for  long  ages  no  break  or 
hiatus  in  the  course,  just  as  in  the  human  family  there 
occurs  no  abrupt  break  or  hiatus,  from  the  circumstance 
that  new  generations  come  upon  the  stage  ere  the  old 
ones  make  their  final  exit.  But  in  the  geological  thread, 
as  in  that  of  the  sybil,  the  continuity  is  twice  abruptly 
broken,  and  the  thread  itself  divided,  in  consequence,  into 
three  parts.  It  is  continuous  from  the  present  time  up  to 
the  commencement  of  the  Tertiary  period;  and  then  so 
abrupt  a  break  occurs,  that,  with  the  exception  of  the 
microscopic  diatoniacea3,  to  which  I  last  evening  referred, 
and  of  one  shell  and  one  coral,  not  a  single  species  crosses 
the  gap.  On  its  farther  or  remoter  side,  however,  where 
the  Secondary  division  closes,  the  intermingling  of  species 
again  begins,  and  runs  on  till  the  commencement  of  this 
great  Secondary  division;  and  then,  just  where  the  Pa- 
laeozoic division  closes,  we  find  another  abrupt  break, 
crossed,  if  crossed  at  all, — for  there  still  exists  some  doubt 
on  the  subject,  —  by  but  two  species  of  plant.1  And  then, 
from  the  farther  side  of  this  second  gap  the  thread  of 
being  continues  unbroken,  until  we  find  it  terminating 
with  the  first  beginnings  of  life  upon  our  planet.  Why 
these  strange  gaps  should  occur,  —  why  the  long  descend- 
ing cord  of  organic  existence  should  be  thus  mysteriously 
broken  in  three,  —  we  know  not  yet,  and  never  may ;  but, 

• 

1  For  a  reference  to  the  research  of  the  last  two  years,  which  has  been 
busily  at  work  upon  this  precise  epoch,  see  Preface. 

15 


170  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

like  the  division  into  books  and  chapters  of  some  great 
work  on  natural  history,  such  as  that  of  Cuvier  or  Buffon, 
it  serves  to  break  up  the  whole  according  to  an  intelligible 
plan,  the  scheme  of  which  we  may,  in  part  at  least,  aspire 
to  comprehend.  The  three  great  divisions  of  the  geol- 
ogist,—  Tertiary,  Secondary,  and  Palaeozoic,  —  of  which 
these  two  chasms,  with  beginnings  of  life  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  present  state  of  things  on  the  other,  form  the 
terminal  limits,  —  represent  each,  if  I  may  so  express  my- 
self, an  independent  dynasty  or  empire.  Under  certain 
qualifications,  to  which  I  shall  afterwards  refer,  the  Ter- 
tiary division  represents  the  dynasty  of  the  mammal ;  the 
Secondary  division  the  dynasty  of  the  reptile;  and  the 
Palaeozoic  division  the  dynasty  of  the  fish.  Each  of  the 
divisions,  too,  has  a  special  type  or  characteristic  fashion 
of  its  own ;  so  that  the  aspect  of  its  existences  differs  as 
much  in  the  group  from  the  aspect  of  the  existences  of 
each  of  the  others,  as  if  they  had  been  groups  belonging 
to  different  planets.  The  vegetable  and  animal  organisms 
of  the  planet  Venus  may  not  differ  more  from  those  of  the 
planet  Mars,  or  those  of  Mars  from  the  organisms  of  the 
planet  Jupiter,  than  the  existences  of  the  Tertiary  division 
differ  from  those  of  the  Secondary  one,  or  those  of  the  Sec- 
ondary one  from  the  existences  of  the  Palaeozoic  division. 
Beneath  the  two  great  divisions  of  the  Cretaceous  sys- 
tem, and  consequently  of  more  ancient  date,  there*  occurs 
in  the  sister  kingdom  an  important  series  of  beds,  chiefly 
of  lacustrine  or  fluviatile  origin,  known  as  the  Wealden. 
Before  the  submergence  of  what  are  now  the  south-eastern 
parts  of  England,  first  beneath  the  comparatively  shallow- 
sea  of  the  Greensand,  and  then  beneath  the  profounder 
depths  of  the  ocean  of  the  Chalk,  a  mighty  river,  the  drain- 
age of  some  unknown  continent,  seems  to  have  flowed  for 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  171 

many  ages  along  these  parts  of  Kent,  Surrey,  and  Sussex, 
known  as  the  Valley  of  the  Weald.  The  banks  of  this 
old  nameless  river  were  covered  with  forests  of  coniferous 
trees  of  the  Pine  and  Araucarian  families,  with  cycadeae 
and  ferns,  and  were  haunted  by  gigantic  reptiles,  herbiv- 
orous and  carnivorous,  some  of  which  rivalled  in  bulk  the 
mammoth  and  the  elephant;  its  waters  were  inhabited  by 
amphibiae  of  the  same  great  class,  chiefly  crocodiles  and 
chelonians  of  extinct  species  and  type ;  by  numerous  fishes, 
too,  of  the  old  ganoid  order;  and  by  shells  whose  families, 
ana  even  genera,  still  exist  in  our  pools  and  rivers,  though 
the  species  be  all  gone.  Winged  reptiles,  too,  occasionally 
flitted  amid  its  woods,  or  sped  over  its  broad  bosom ;  and 
insects  of  the  same  family  as  that  to  which  our  dragon  flies 
belong  spent  the  first  two  stages  of  their  existence  at  the 
bottom  of  its  pools  and  shallows,  and  the  terminal  one  in 
darting  over  it  on  their  wings  of  delicate  gauze  in  quest  of 
their  prey.  It  is  stated  by  Dr.  Man  tell,  our  highest  author- 
ity on  the  subject  of  the  Weald,  that  the  delta  of  this 
great  river  is  about  two  thousand  feet  in  thickness,  —  a 
thickness  which  quadruples  that  of  the  delta  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  American 
"  Father  of  Waters "  is  a  very  ancient  river ;  and  yet  it 
would  seem  that  this  river  of  the  Wealden,  which  has  now 
existed  for  myriads  of  ages  in  but  its  fossilized  remains, 
hidden  under  the  Wolds  of  Surrey  and  Kent,  —  this  old 
river,  which  flowed  over  where  the  ocean  of  the  Oolite 
once  had  been,  and  in  turn  gave  place  and  was  overflowed 
by  the  ocean  of  the  Chalk,  —  continued  to  roll  its  down- 
ward waters  amid  forests  as  dense  and  as  thickly  inhabited 
as  those  of  the  great  American  valley,  during  a  period  per- 
haps four  times  as  extended. 

Compared  with  the   English   formation  of  the  Weald, 


172  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

which  extends  over  a  wide,  and  what  was  at  one  time  a 
very  rude  district,  our  beds  of  the  Scotch  Wealden  are  but 
of  little  depth,  and  limited  extent.  And  yet  they  serve  to 
throw  a  not  unimportant  light  on  the-  true  character  and 
place  of  the  formation.  It  occurs  in  England,  as  I  have 
said,  between  two  great  marine  systems,  —  the  Cretaceous 
and  the  Oolitic;  and  the  question  has  arisen,  to  which  of 
these  systems  does  it  belong?  Now,  our  Scotch  beds  of 
the  Weald  determine  the  question.  They  make  their  ap- 
pearance, not  at  the  top  of  Oolitic  deposits,  as  in  England, 
but  intercalated  throughout  the  system,  —  occurring  in  the 
Isle  of  Skye,  where  they  were  first  detected  many  years 
ago  by  Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  immediately  under  the 
Oxford  clay,  a  bed  of  the  Middle  Oolite ;  and  at  Brora, 
win -re  they  were  first  detected  a  few  twelvemonths  since 
by  Mr.  Robertson  of  Elgin,  in  pretty  nearly  the  same  me- 
dial position,  and  where  what  is  known  as  the  great  Oolite 
occurs.  Three  years  ago  I  had  the  pleasure  of  detecting 
a  bed  of  the  same  lacustrine  or  estuary  character,  and 
bearing  many  of  the  characteristic  marks  of  the  Weald, 
greatly  lower  still,  —  lower,  indeed,  than  any  fresh-water 
deposit  of  the  Secondary  division  in  Britain.  I  found  it 
occurring  not  forty  yards  over  the  bottom  of  the  Lias, — 
the  formation  which  constitutes  the  base  of  the  Oolitic 
system.  In  Morayshire  the  Weald  occurs  in  the  form 
of  outliers,  that  rise,  as  at  Linksfield,  in  the  immediate 
neighborhood  of  Elgin,  into  low  swelling  hills,  resting  on 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  the  district,  and  so  thoroughly 
insulated  from  every  other  rook  of  the  same  age,  that  they 
have  reminded  me  of  detached  hillocks  of  debris  and  ashes 
shot  down  on  the  surface  of  some  ancient  moor  by  some 
painstaking  farmer,  who  had  contemplated  bringing  the 
wa>te  tinder  subjection  to  the  plough.  But  though  value- 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  173 

less,  from  their  detached  character,  for  determining  the 
place  of  the  formation,  they  serve  better  than  the  inter- 
calated beds  of  Ross,  Skye,  and  Sutherland,  to  establish 
by  their  animal  remains  the  palaeontological  identity  of  the 
Scotch  with  the  English  Wealden. 

Rather  more  than  twelve  years  ago,  the  late  Dr.  John 
Malcolmson,  of  Madras,  —  a  zealous  and  accomplished  ge- 
ologist, too  early  lost  to  science  and  his  friends,  —  brought 
with  him,  when  on  a  visit  to  the  Continent,  several  speci- 
mens of  ichthyic  remains  from  a  Morayshire  deposit,  and 
submitted  them  to  Agassiz.  "Permit  me,"  said  the  natur- 
alist, "  to  find  out  for  myself  the  formation  to  which  they 
belong."  He  passed  hand  and  eye  over  tooth  and  spine, 
plate  and  bone,  and  at  length  set  his  finger  on  a  single 
scale  of  rhomboid al  form  and  brightly  enamelled  surface. 
"  Some  of  these  teeth,"  he  said,  "  belong  to  the  genus  Hybo- 
dus,  but  the  species  are  new,  and  the  genus  itself  has  a  wide 
range.  Here,  however,  is  something  more  determinate. 
This  scale  belongs  to  the  Lepidotus  minor,  or  ichthyolite 
of  the  Weald,  and  one  of  the  most  Characteristic  fishes 
of  the  great  fresh-water  formation  of  Surrey  and  Kent." 
The  fossils  on  which  the  distinguished  ichthyologist  thus 
promptly,  and,  as  it  proved,  correctly  decided,  had  been 
collected  by  Mr.  Malcolmson  from  the  Wealden  outlier 
at  Linksfield ;  and  the  ichthyolite  which  he  so  specially 
singled  out  —  the  Lepidotus  —  seems  to  have  been  a 
fresh-water  fish  of  the  nearly  extinct  ganoid  order,  and 
more  nearly  akin  to  the  Lepidosteus  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can rivers  and  lakes  than  to  any  other  fish  that  now  exists. 
By  much  the  greater  number  of  its  contemporaries  in  the 
deposit  also  belonged  to  lakes  and  rivers.  Some  of  the 
limestone  slabs  are  thickly  covered  over  by  fresh-water 
shells,  of  types  very  much  akin  to  those  which  still  occur 

15* 


174  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

in  our  pools  and  ditches,  such  as  Planorbis  and  Palud  in  a. 
It  presents  also  beds  of  a  fresh-water  mussel  akin  to  a 
mussel  of  the  English  Weald,  —  Mytilus  Lyellii  ;  and  it 
so  abounds  in  the  remains  of  those  minute,  one-eyed  crus- 
taceans known  as  the  Cyprides,  that  the  vast  numbers  of 
their  egg-shaped  shelly  cases  give  to  some  of  the  beds  a 
structure  resembling  the  roe  of  a  fish.  It  contains,  too, 
bones  of  a  species  of  tortoise,  and  several  other  decidedly 
fresh-water  remains ;  while  another  class  of  its  organisms 
serve  to  show  that  it  was  occasionally  visited  by  denizens 
of  the  sea.  It  has  furnished  specimens  of  bones  and  teeth 
of  Plesiosaurus,  —  a  marine  reptile  ;  and  some  of  the  upper 
beds  contain  a  small  oyster;  while  a  class  of  its  remains, 
—  the  teeth  and  huge  dorsal  spines  of  Hybodonts,  an  ex- 
tinct family  of  sharks,  —  though  they  may  have  been  fitted 
to  sustain  life  in  brackish  water,  seem  to  indicate  rather  a 
sea  than  a  lacustrine  or  river  habitat.  The  deposit  took 
place  in  all  probability  in  the  upper  reaches  of  an  estuary 
operated  upon  by  the  tides,  and  at  one  time  fresh  and  at 
another  brackish,  artfl  where,  in  a  certain  debatable  tract, 
the  fishes,  reptiles,  and  shells  of  the  river  met  and  mingled 
with  the  fishes,  reptiles,  and  shells  of  the  sea.  I  may  men- 
tion, that  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  fresh-water 
or  Weald  beds,  intercalated,  as  in  Ross  and  Sutherland, 
with  the  marine  deposits  of  the  Lias  or  Oolite,  there  al- 
ways occur  beds  of  a  species  of  shell  which,  though  it  ex- 
hibits internally  a  peculiar  structure  of  hinge,  unlike  any 
other  known  to  the  conchologist,  bears  externally  very 
much  the  appearance  of  a  my  til  us  or  mussel.  It  seems  to 
have  lived  in  brackish  water,  and  to  have  marked  a  tran- 
sition stage  between  the  marine  and  lacustrine,  —  the  salt 
and  the  fresh  ;  for  immediately  under  or  over  it,  as  the 
case  occurs,  the  explorer  is  ever  sure  to  find  productions  of 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  175 

the  land  or  of  fresh  water,  —  lake  or  river  shells,  such  as 
cyclas  or  paludina,  or  portions  of  terrestrial  plants,  and  oc- 
casionally of  fresh- water  tortoises.  This  transition  shell  is 
known  as  the  Perna.  These  notices  you  will,  I  am  afraid, 
deem  tediously  minute ;  but  they  indulge  us  with  at  least 
a  glimpse  of  a  portion  of  what  is  now  our  country  during 
an  immensely  extended  period,  of  which  no  other  record 
exists.  Where  some  nameless  river  enters  the  sea,  we  de- 
termine, as  through  a  thick  fog,  which  conceals  the  line  of 
banks  on  either  hand,  that  the  waters  swarm  with  life,  rep- 
tilian and  ichthyic :  the  glossy  scales  of  the  river  Lepidotus 
gleam  bright  through  the  depths ;  while  the  shark-like 
ffybodus  from  the  distant  ocean  shows  above  the  surface 
his  long  dorsal  fin,  armed  with  its  thorny  spine  ;  and  over 
beds  of  shells  of  mingled  character,  a  carnivorous  fresh- 
water tortoise,  akin  to  the  fierce  Trionyx  of  the  southern 
parts  of  North  America,  meets  with  the  scarce  more  form- 
idable sea-born  Plesiosaurus. 

In  these  Morayshire  outliers  of  the  Weald  we  first  find 
in  situ  in  our  country  (for  we  need  scarce  take  into  account 
the  Tertiary  beds  of  Mull),  fossiliferous  deposits  that  have 
been  converted  into  solid  rock ;  and  certainly  the  appear- 
ance of  some  of  the  sections  is  such  as  to  awaken  curiosity. 
In  the  section  of  Linksfield,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Elgin, 
though  the  thickness  of  the  deposit  does  not  exceed  forty 
feet,  there  occur  numerous  alternations  of  argillaceous  and 
calcareous  beds,  differing  from  each  other  in  color  and 
quality,  and  not  unfrequently  in  their  fossils  also  ;  and  each 
of  which  evidently  represents  a  state  of  things  which  ob- 
tained during  the  period  of  their  deposition,  distinct  from 
the  preceding  and  succeeding  states.1  Strata  of  gray, 

1  Fielding,  in  his  "Voyage  to  Lisbon  (1754),"  gives  an  account  of  an 
inaccessible  bank  of  mud  which  stretched  at  low  water  between  the  shore 


176  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

green,  blue,  and  almost  black  clays,  alternate  with  beds  of 
light  green,  light  brown,  gray,  and  almost  black  limestones; 
and  such  is  the  effect,  when  a  first  section  is  opened  in  the 
deposit,  as  sometimes  happens  to  facilitate  the  working  of 
a  limestone  quarry  below,  that  one  is  reminded,  by  the 
variety  and  peculiar  tone  of  the  colors,  of  the  inlaid  work 
of  an  old-fashioned  cabinet  made  of  the  tinted  woods  which 
were  in  such  common  use  about  two  centimes  ago.  Some 
of  these  bands  seem,  from  their  contents,  to  be  of  fresh 
water ;  some  of  marine  origin ;  one  bed  nearly  four  feet  in 
thickness  is  composed  almost  exclusively  of  the  shelly 
coverings  of  a  minute  crustacean,  —  Cypris  globosa,  —  not 
half  the  size  of  a  small  pin-head ;  one  is  strewed  over  with 
the  teeth  of  sharks ;  one  with  the  plates  and  scales  of 
ganoidal  fishes ;  in  one  a  small  mussel  is  exceedingly 
abundant;  another  contains  the  shells  of  Planorbis  and 
Paludina;  in  this  layer  we  find  a  small  oyster,  which  must 
have  lived  in  the  sea ;  in  that,  a  Cyclas,  the  inhabitant  of 
a  lake ;  here  the  plates  of  a  river  tortoise ;  there  the  bones 
of  the  marine  Plesiosaur.  Of  all  the  many-colored  strata 
of  which  the  deposit  consists,  there  is  not  one  which  does 
not  speak  of  that  law  of  change  of  which  the  poet,  as  if  in 
anticipation  of  the  discoveries  of  modern  science,  sings  so 
philosophically  and  well : 

Of  chance  exchange,  oh!  let  not  man  complain, 
Else  shall  he  never,  never  cease  to  wail ; 

at  Ryde  and  the  sea.  "  Between  the  shore  and  the  sea,"  he  says,  "  there 
is  at  low  water  an  impassable  gulf  of  deep  mud,  which  can  neither  be 
traversed  by  walking  or  swimming,  so  that  for  near  one-half  of  the  twenty- 
four  hours  Ryde  is  inaccessible  by  friend  or  foe."  The  same  tract  now  is 
occupied  by  an  expanse  of  firm  white  sand,  which  forms  excellent  bathing 
-round;  but  immediately  under,  at  the  depth  of  from  eighteen  inches  to 
tw..  feet,  the  mud  of  Fielding's  days  is  found  occurring  as  a  dark-colored 
impalpable  silt. 


LECTURES  OST  GEOLOGY.  177 

» 

For  from  the  imperial  dome,  to  where  the  swain 
Rears  the  lone  cottage  in  the  silent  dale, 
All  feel  the  assault  of  Fortune's  fickle  gale ; 
Art,  empire,  earth  itself,  to  change  are  doomed : 
Earthquakes  hare  raised  to  heaven  the  humble  vale, 
And  gulfs  the  mountain's  mighty  mass  entombed; 
And  where  the  Atlantic  rolls,  wide  continents  have  bloomed. 

Regarded,  too,  as  the  record  of,  if  I  may  so  express  my- 
self, a  party-colored  time,  these  party-colored  layers  are  of 
no  little  interest.  There  forms  in  the  recesses  of  the 
Northumbrian  coal-pits  a  party-colored  clay,  consisting  of 
grey  and  black  layers,  which,  from  a  certain  peculiarity  to 
which  I  shall  immediately  advert,  bears  the  name  of  Sab- 
bath-stone. The  springs  which  ooze  into  the  pits  are 
charged  with  a  fine  impalpable  pipe-clay,  which  they 
deposit  in  the  pools  and  waters  of  the  deserted  workings, 
and  which  is  of  a  pale  gray  color  approaching  to  white. 
When  the  miners  are  at  work,  however,  a  light  black  dust, 
struck  by  their  tools  from  the  coal,  and  carried  by  cur- 
rents of  air  into  the  recesses  of  the  mine,  is  deposited 
along  with  it;  and,  in  consequence,  each  day's  work  is 
marked  by  a  thin  black  layer  in  the  mass,  while  each 
night  during  which  there  is  a  cessation  of  labor,  is  repre- 
sented by  a  pale  layer,  which  exhibits  the  color  natural  to 
the  clay.  And  when  a  cross  section  of  the  substance 
thus  deposited  comes  to  be  made,  every  week  of  regular 
employment  is  found  to  be  represented  by  a  group  of  six 
black  streaks  closely  lined  off  on  a  pale  ground,  and  each 
Sabbath  by  a  broad  pale  streak  interposed  between  each 
group,  —  exactly  such  a  space,  in  short,  as  a  clerk,  in  keep- 
ing tally,  would  leave  between  his  fagots  of  strokes.  In 
this  curious  record  a  holiday  takes  its  place  among  the 
working  days,  like  a  second  Sabbath.  "  How  comes  this 
week  to  have  two  Sabbaths?"  inquired  a  gentleman  to 


178  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

• 

whom  a  specimen  was  shown  at  one  of  the  pits.  "That 
blank  Friday,"  replied  the  foreman,  "  was  the  day  of  the 
races."  —  "  And  what,"  said  the  visitor,  "  means  this  large 
empty  space,  a  full  fortnight  in  breadth  and  more?" — "O, 
that  space,"  rejoined  the  foreman,  "shows  the  time  of  the 
strike  for  wages:  the  men  stood  out  for  three  weeks,  and 
then  gave  in."  In  fine,  the  Sabbath-stone  of  the  Nor- 
thumbrian mines  is  a  sort  of  geologic  register  of  the  work 
done  in  them,  —  a  sort  of  natural  tally,  in  which  the  sedi- 
mentary agent  keeps  the  chalk,  and  which  tells  when  the 
miners  labor  and  when  they  rest,  and  whether  they  keep 
their  Sabbaths  intact  or  encroach  upon  them.  One  would 
scarce  expect  to  find  of  transactions  so  humble  a  record  in 
the  heart  of  a  stone ;  but  it  may  serve  to  show  how  very 
curious  that  narrative  might  be,  could  we  but  read  it 
aright,  which  lies  couched  in  the  party-colored  layers  of 
the  Moray  shire  Wealden.  All  its  many  beds,  green, 
black,  and  gray,  argillaceous  and  calcareous,  record  the 
workings  of  nature,  with  her  alternations  of  repose,  in  a 
time  of  frequent  vicissitude,  and  amid  its  annals  of  chem- 
ical and  mechanical  change  embody  in  many  an  episo- 
dical little  passage  its  exhibitions  of  anatomical  structure 
and  its  anecdotes  of  animal  life. 

Before  passing  on  to  the  Oolite,  as  developed  in  Scot- 
land, or  rather  to  our  Scotch  deposits  of  the  marine 
Oolite,  —  for  what  we  call  our  Wealden  is,  as  I  have 
shown,  merely  an  estuary  or  lacustrine  Oolite,  —  let  me 
solicit  your  attention  to  a  few  points  illustrative  of  what 
may  be  termed  the  framework  of  our  country.  There  are 
two  sets  of  conditions^  under  which  land  may  arise  from 
the  ocean.  Its  hills  and  plateaus  may  be  formed  by  the 
subterranean  forces  violently  thrusting  them  up,  like  vast 
wedges,  through  the  general  crust  of  the  earth,  and  high 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  179 

over  the  ocean  level ;  or  it  may  be  brought  up  to  the  light 
and  air  en  masse  by  a  general  elevation  over  wide  areas 
of  the  unbroken  crust  itself;  or  land  may  again  sink 
under  these  two  sets  of  conditions :  it  may  sink  in  conse- 
quence of  a  breaking  up  and  prostration  of  its  framework 
to  the  average  level  of  the  crust,  —  of  a  striking  back, 
if  I  may  so  speak,  of  the  protruded  wedges;  or  it  may 
sink  in  consequence  of  a  general  depression  over  a  wide 
area  of  the  portion  of  the  crust  on  which  its  framework  is 
erected.  Thus  Scotland  might  disappear  under  the  waves, 
either  by  some  violent  earthquake  convulsion  that  would 
strike  down  its  hills  and  table-lands  to  the  general  level 
of  the  earth's  crust,  and  of  consequence  wholly  destroy  its 
contour;  or  it  might  disappear  through  a  gentle  sinking 
of  the  area  that  it  occupies,  which  would  leave  its  general 
contour  unchanged.  "Were  there  a  depression  to  take  place 
where  it  now  rises,  of  but  one  foot  in  five  hundred  over 
an  area  a  thousand  miles  square,  its  highest  mountain 
summits  would  be  buried  beneath  the  sea,  and  yet  the 
contour  of  the  submerged  land  would  remain  almost  iden- 
tically what  it  is,  —  its  hills  would  retain  the  same  relative 
elevation  over  its  valleys,  and  its  higher  table-lands  over 
its  lower  plains.  Now,  in  the  later  ages  of  its  history,  — 
in  those  ages,  for  instance,  in  which  the  ice-laden  ocean  of 
the  boulder-clay  rose  high  along  its  hill-sides,  and  it  ex- 
isted as  a  wintry  archipelago  of  islands,  —  there  seems  to 
have  taken  place  scarce  any  change  in  its  framework :  the 
depressions  through  which  it  sank,  and  the  elevations 
through  which  it  rose,  seem  to  have  been  depressions 
and  elevations  of  area;  and,  whether  under  or  over  the 
waves,  it  continued  to  retain  its  general  contour.  The 
last  great  change  which  affected  its  framework,  and  gave 
to  it  a  different  profile  in  relation  to  the  general  surface  of 


180  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

the  globe  from  that  which  it  had  borne  in  the  earlier  ages, 
—  the  change  which  thrust  up  its  latest-born  lines  of 
mountains  like  wedges  through  the  earth's  crust,  —  was 
a  change  which  took  place  a  little  posterior  to  that  period 
of  its  history  at  which  I  am  now  arrived.  We  find  that 
its  last  lines  of  hills  disturbed  and  bore  up  with  them 
deposits  of  the  Lias  and  of  the  Oolite,  but  of  no  later 
formations.  The  gigantic  Ben  Nevis  and  his  Anakim 
brethren  of  the  same  group  were  raising  their  heads 
and  shoulders  through  the  earth's  crust,  to  form  the  future 
landmarks  of  our  country,  shortly  after  the  period  when 
the  river  Lepidoids  of  the  Wealden  were  disporting  in 
the  same  brackish  tract  with  the  Hybodont  sharks  of  its 
seas,  and  its  fresh-water  Chelonians  and  marine  Plesiosauri 
met  and  intermingled  in  the  same  neutral  rocks  of  es- 
tuary. 

The  last  great  paroxysm  of  upheaval  among  our  Scot- 
tish mountains  seems  to  have  operated  in  lines  that  trav- 
ersed the  country  diagonally  from  nearly  south-west  by 
south  to  north-east  by  north,  —  the  line  indicated  by  that 
of  the  great  Caledonian  Valley.  We  find  a  northern 
district  of  considerable  extent  ploughed  in  this  direction 
by  the  great  parallel  glens  traversed  by  the  Spey,  the 
Findhorn,  the  Nairn,  and  the  Ness.  The  northern  shore 
of  the  Moray  Frith,  too,  with  that  remarkable  line  of  hills 
which  includes  the  Sutors  of  Cromarty,  pertains  to  this 
system,  as  also  the  higher  mountain  range  which  rises 
along  the  coast  of  Sutherland,  and  to  which  the  Ord  Hill 
of  Caithness  belongs.  These  lines  of  hills,  wherever  they 
have  come  in  contact  —  as  along  the  shores  of  the  Moray 
Frith  —  with  beds  of  the  Lias  and  Oolite,  have  disturbed 
and  tilted  up,  at  a  steep  angle,  their  edges.  The  hill  of 
Eathie,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cromarty,  —  a  hill  of  the 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  181 

series  in  which  the  two  Sutors  occur,  —  has  at  one  place 
borne  up  the  Lower  Lias  on  its  flanks  at  an  angle  of  eighty; 
and  among  the  rocks  of  the  Northern  Sutor  there  is  a  tall 
precipice  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  with  an  uptilted 
deposit  of  the  Lias  at  its  base,  whose  abrupt,  dizzy  front, 
once  the  haunt  of  the  eagle,  and  still  that  of  the  blue 
hawk,  was  evidently,  ere  the  elevation  of  the  series,  part 
of  the  horizontal  platform  on  which  the  first  Liassic  stra- 
tum had  been  deposited.  What  was  a  flat  submarine  bot- 
tom then,  is  a  steep  ivy-mantled  precipice  now.  Across 
the  long  deep  valleys  and  mountain  ridges  of  this  last  line 
of  upheaval  in  Scotland,  —  the  line  to  which  Ben  Nevis, 
Milfourveny,  and  the  Ord  Hill  of  Caithness  belong,  and 
whose  period  of  elevation  a  high  Continental  authority, 
Elie  de  Beaumont,  regards  as  identical  with  that  of  the 
Mont  Pilas  and  Cote  d'Or  of  France,  —  we  find  a  greatly 
less  continuous,  because  more  interrupted  and  broken,  set  of 
ridges,  running  in  a  nearly  westerly  direction.  The  friths 
of  Dornoch,  Cromarty,  and  Beauly,  with  all  the  bays 
of  Munlochy  and  Urquhart,  Loch  Oich  and  Loch  Eil, 
which  all  strike  westwards  across  the  country  from  off  the 
great  diagonal  trench  of  the  Caledonian  Valley,  indicate 
the  direction  of  this  second  and  earlier  line  of  upheaval. 
I  say  earlier  line.  The  hills  of  the  diagonal  Ben  Nevis 
line  disturbed  and  broke  up  the  Oolite,  whereas  the  hills 
of  the  transverse,  or,  as  I  may  term  it,  Ben  Weavis  line, 
disturbed  and  bore  up  with  them  nothing  more  modern 
than  the  Old  Red  Sandstone.  I  have  described  the 
northern  part  of  the  kingdom  as  consisting  of  a  great 
Primary  nucleus,  surrounded  by  strata,  more  or  less 
broken,  of  Old  Red  Sandstone,  Lias,  and  Oolite.1  Let 

1  To  which  is  to  be  now  added  Silurian." 
16 


182  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

us  now  further  conceive  of  that  nucleus  as  a  stony  field, 
that  had  been  first  ploughed  across  and  fretted  into  deep 
furrows  and  steep  mountainous  ridges,  and  then  in  an  after 
period  ploughed  diagonally,  so  as  partially  to  efface  the 
former  ploughing,  so  that  only  in  the  direction  of  the  last 
ploughing  do  the  ridges  and  furrows  remain  tolerably 
entire,  —  let  us,  I  say,  conceive  of  such  a  ploughed  field, 
and  we  will  have  a  tolerably  adequate  conception,  so  far 
as  it  goes,  of  the  framework  of  at  least  the  northern 
portion  of  Scotland.  In  the  southern  part  of  the  king- 
dom there  is  yet  another  line  of  elevation  exhibited, 
whose  direction  from  nearly  north-east  to  south-west  we 
find  indicated  by  the  nearly  parallel  lines  in  which  the 
greater  formations  of  the  Lowland  counties,  from  the  clay- 
states  that  flank  the  Grampians,  to  the  Grauwackes  of  the 
border  districts,  sweep  across  the  country.  I  fear  that  the 
homely  illustrations  which  I  have  to  employ  in  rendering 
my  subject  comprehensible,  —  such  as  wedges  struck  up- 
wards from  below,  —  a  field  first  ploughed  across  and  then 
diagonally,  —  may  have  the  effect  of  so  reducing  my  sub- 
ject in  your  minds  into  a  mere  model,  that,  through  the 
necessary  reduction,  more  may  be  lost  in  expansiveness  of 
feeling  than  gained  by  any  substitution  of  clearness  of 
view.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  in  the  conceptions 
of  mind,  as  in  the  collocations  of  matter,  the  portable 
means  the  small ;  and  that  Goethe  exercised  his  wonted 
shrewdness  in  remarking,  that  when  the  ancients  spoke 
of  the  unmeasurable  earth  and  the  illimitable  sea,  it  was 
with  a  profounder  feeling  than  any  now  exercised  by  the 
geographer  in  a  time  when  every  school-girl  can  tell  that 
the  world  is  round.  You  will,  however,  remember,  that 
though  my  illustrations  are  small,  my  subject  is  large ;  and 
such  of  my  audience  as  have  sailed  over  the  profound 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  183 

depths  of  Loch  Ness,  —  depths  greatly  more  profound  than 
those  of  the  German  Ocean  beyond, —  and  seen  those 
lines  of  russet  mountains,  so  often  capped  with  cloud,  and 
so  often,  even  at  midsummer,  streaked  with  snow,  —  that 
rise  on  either  hand,  and  that  inclose  from  sea  to  sea  that 
mighty  trench  which  the  old  unsophisticated  Highlander 
learned  to  distinguish  as  the  great  Glen  of  Albyn,  —  when 
they  call  up  to  memory  the  noble  features  of  the  scene, — 
the  long  retiring  vista  on  either  hand,  purple  in  the  far 
distance,  and  remember  that  that  vast  rectilinear  hollow 
forms  but  one  pf  the  plough  furrows  of  my  illustration, — 
they  will  see  that  that  with  which  I  am  in  reality  deal- 
ing is  the  sublime  of  nature,  and  that  even  the  details 
of  my  subject,  rightly,  appreciated,  are  not  suited  to  lower 
our  conceptions  of  the  wonderful  workings  of  old  of  Him 
who,  by  processes  which  science  is  but  now  aspiring  to 
comprehend,  "gathered  the  waters  together  into  one  place, 
*hat  the  dry  land  might  appear,"  and  laid  the  deep-seated 
foundation  of  the  mighty  hills. 

Let  us  now  pass  to  the  Oolite  proper,  and  its  base  the 
Lias,  as  we  find  them  developed  in  Scotland.  They  form 
hut  a  comparatively  small  portion  of  the  surface  of  the 
country, —  not  much  more,  it  has  been  estimated,  than 
•sixty  square  miles;  nor  can  I  refer  definitely  to  any 
marked  peculiarity  of  scenery  in  the  districts  in  which 
they  occur.  The  Oolites  of  Sutherland  extend  westwards 
-md  southwards  from  the  Ord  Hill  of  Caithness  to  the 
village  of  Golspie,  a  distance  of  about  sixteen  miles ;  and' 
form,  under  the  rugged  line  of  hills  against  whose  flanks 
they  recline,  a  green  narrow  strip  of  low  country,  that, 
where  not  too  deeply  covered  up  by  debris  of  the  Primary 
rocks,  transported  from  the  interior  during  the  Pleistocene 
period,  is,  for  its  extent,  of  great  agricultural  value,  and 


184  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

bears  on  its  cultured  surface  the  rich  fields  and  extensive 
woods  of  Dunrobin,  the  stately  castle  of  the  old  earls  of 
Sutherland.  Further  to  the  west  and  south,  along  the 
eastern  shores  of  Crqmarty  and  Ross,  detached  patches  of 
the  Lias  occur,  as  at  Shandwick,  at  the  Northern  Sutor 
of  Cromarty,  at  the  Southern  Sutor,  and  at  the  Hill  of 
Eathie,  —  each  patch  occurring  directly  opposite,  and  lean- 
ing against,  one  of  the  upheaved  hills,  which,  as  I  have 
already  said,  were  undoubtedly  the  agents  in  raising  and 
bringing  it  to  the  surface.  The  Lias  and  Oolite  also  ap- 
pear on  the  southern  side  of  the  Moray  Frith,  in  the 
counties  of  Moray  and  Banff,  but  merely  as  outliers  of 
very  limited  extent,  and  sorely  broken  up  or  ground  down 
by  the  denuding  Pleistocene  agencies.  On  the  western 
coast  of  Scotland  the  Lias  may  be  seen  on  the  mainland 
at  Applecross,  and  on  the  sides  of  Loch  Aline,  opposite 
the  Sound  of  Mull ;  while  in  the  inner  Hebrides,  it  forms, 
with  the  Oolite,  though  greatly  overflown  by  trap,  the 
base  of  the  larger  part  of  the  island  of  Mull,  of  two  of 
the  Small  Isles,  Eigg  and  Muck,  of  Raza  and  Scalpa,  and 
of  large  tracts  of  the  eastern  and  northern  half  of  Skye. 
At  Broadford,  in  the  latter  island,  the  Lias  forms  the 
whole  of  the  rich  level  islet  of  Pabba,  which,  lying  as 
at  anchor  in  its  quiet  bay,  reminds  one,  from  its  prevail- 
ing color  and  form,  of  one  of  the  low,  green  steamboats 
of  the  Clyde.  Opposite  Pabba,  the  Liassic  deposit  sweeps 
across  the  mainland  of  Skye  from  sea  to  sea,  along  a  flat 
valley  some  two  or  three  miles  wide ;  but  while  the  mi- 
nute Liassic  islet  resembles,  from  the  softness  of  its  out- 
line, an  islet  of  England  set  down  in  a  hill-enclosed  bay 
of  the  Scottish  Highlands,  there  is  nothing  English  in  the 
scenic  character  of  the  Liassic  valley.  It  is  a  brown  and 
sombre  expanse  of  marsh  and  moor,  studded  by  blue, 


LECTUHES  ON  GEOLOGY.  185 

ilreary  lochans,  interesting,  however,  to  the  botanist,  as 
the  habitats  of  the  rare  Eriocaulon  septangulare.  The 
waste  is  haunted,  too,  say  the  Highlanders,  by  Ludag,  a 
malignant  goblin,  not  more  known  elsewhere  in  Europe 
than  the  rare  plant  that  in  the  last  age  used  to  be  seen 
at  dusk  hopping  with  immense  hops  on  its  one  leg,  —  for, 
unlike  every  other  denizen  of  the  supernatural  world,  it  is 
not  furnished  with  two,  —  and  that,  enveloped  in  rags, 
and  with  fierce  misery  in  its  hollow  eye,  has  dealt  heavy 
blows,  it  is  said,  on  the  cheeks  of  benighted  travellers. 
Certainly  a  more  appropriate  spectre  could  scarce  be  sum- 
moned to  walk  at  nights  over  the  entombed  remains  of 
the  old  monsters  of  the  Lias  than  one-legged  Ludag,  the 
goblin  of  the  wastes  of  Broadford.  Such,  in  brief,  is  a 
summary  of  our  Oolitic  deposits.  They  occupy,  as  I  have 
said,  but  a  small  portion  of  the  surface  of  Scotland ;  and, 
though  coal  has  occasionally  been  wrought  in  them,  and 
though  they  furnish  in  several  localities  supplies  of  lime 
and  of  building  stone,  their  economic  importance  is  com- 
paratively small.  But  a  well-filled  volume  —  the  life- 
long work  of  some  laborious  chronicler  —  may  have  no 
economic  importance  in  the  lower  and  humbler  sense, 
and  may  yet  form  a  valuable  record  of  bygone  transac- 
tions and  events  suited  to  delight  and  instruct  throughout 
all  generations.  And  it  is  thus  with  the  Oolitic  deposits 
of  Scotland.  Their  innumerable  strata,  closely  written 
"within  and  without"  in  a  language  in  which  eveiy 
character  is  an  organism,  form  the  leaves  of  a  record  in 
which  many  of  the  marvellous  existences  that  flourished 
during  what  are  geologically  the  middle  ages  of  our  coun- 
try's history  are  well  and  wonderfully  preserved.  -Instead 
of  dissipating  your  attention  by  describing  at  length  the 
fossils  of  its  various  deposits,  I  shall  attempt  giving  you 

16* 


186  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

a  general  idea  of  the  whole  under  the  ordinary  division 
of  animal  and  vegetable,  as  they  have  come  to  my  knowl- 
edge during  the  researches  of  at  least  thirty  years. 

In  one  of  its  features  Oolitic  flora  of  what  is  now  Scot- 
land must  have  resembled  its  flora  in  the  present,  or  rather 
in  the  past  age,  ere  our  native  pine-woods  had  yielded  to 
the  axe.     Trees  of  the  fir  or  pine  division  of  the  Coniferae, 
many  of  them  of  slow  growth  and  large  size,  must  have 
formed  huge  forests  in  a  province  of  the  land  of  the  Oolite 
Avliich  extended  from  what  is  now  the  island  of  Mull  to 
the  Ord  Hill  of  Caithness.     The  Scuir  of  Eigg,  a  subaerial 
mole  of  columnar  pitchstone,  four  hundred  feet  in  height, 
and  perched  on  the  ridge  of  a  tall  hill,  rests  on  the  remains 
of  a  prostrated  forest,  as  some  of  our  submarine  moles  rest 
on  foundations  of  piles.    And  of  this  forest  all  the  trees 
seem  to  have  consisted  of  one  species,  —  a  conifer  of  the 
Oolite  now  known  to  the  fossil  botanist  as  the  Pinites 
EiygensiS)  or  Eigg  pine.     Branches  and  portions  of  the 
trunks  of  a  similar  pine  are  not  unfrequent  in  the  Lias  of 
Eathie  and  Ross ;  and  in  shale-beds  of  the  Lower  Oolite 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Helmsdale  there  occur  in  abun- 
dance fossil  trunks  and  branches,  mingled  with  cones  and 
the  narrow  spiky  leaflets  characteristic  of  the  family.     I 
have  reckoned  in  the  transverse  section  of  a  Helmsdale 
pine-trunk  about  two  feet  in  diameter,  more  than  a  hun- 
dred annual  rings.     And  from  the  rings  and  roots  of  some 
of  the  others,  its  contemporaries,  I   found   that  curious 
insight  might  be  derived  respecting  the  state  and  condi- 
tion  of  vegetable  life  in  the  old  Scotch  woods  of  the 
Oolite.     In  the  first  place,  the  annual  rings  themselves 
told  in,-,  wl,«.n  exposed  to  transmitted  light  in  the  micro- 
scope, that  the  winters  of  that  time  gave  vegetation  as 
decided  a  check  as  our  winters  now.     The  tender  woody 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  187 

cells  were  first  dwarfed  and  thickened  in  their  formation 
by  the  strengthening  of  the  autumnal  cold,  and  then  for 
a  season  they  ceased  to  form  altogether.  But  then  the 
spring  came,  and  over  the  hard  concentric  line  drawn  by 
the  chill  hand  of  winter  they  began  to  form  themselves 
anew  in  full-sized  luxuriance;  and  thus,  year  after  year, 
and  for  century  after  century,  the  process  went  on.  Some 
of  these  ancient  pine-trees  grew  in  rich  sheltered  hollows, 
arid  acquired  bulk  so  rapidly,  that  they  increased  their 
diameter  eight  and  a  half  inches  in  twenty  years ;  others 
grew  so  slowly,  that  they  increased  their  diameter  only 
two  and  a  half  inches  in  forty  years.  And  it  is  a  curious 
circumstance,  that  in  both  those  of  slower  and  of  more 
rapid  growth  we  find  alternating  groups  of  broader  and 
narrower  annual  rings,  indicating  apparently  groups  of  bet- 
ter and  worse  seasons.  Lord  Bacon  remarks  in  one  of  his 
Essays,  —  the  Essay  on  the  Vicissitude  of  Things,  —  that 
it  was  a  circumstance  first  observed  in  the  Low  Countries 
(the  provinces  of  the  Netherlands),  that  there  were  cer- 
tain meteorological  cycles  of  seasons — groups  of  warmer 
and  groups  of  colder  summers,  and  of  more  temperate  and 
of  less  temperate  winters  —  which  periodically  came  round 
again.  And  we  have  seen  not  very  successful  attempts 
made  in  our  own  times  to  measure  these  cycles,  and  reduce 
them  to  a  formula,  from  which  the  nature  of  the  coming 
seasons  might  be  determined  beforehand.  But  there  can 
be  little  doubt —  whatever  the  cause  or  the  order  of  their 
occurrence  —  that  alternations  of  groups  of  colder  and 
warmer,  better  and  worse  seasons,  do  occur ;  and  it  seems 
more  than  probable  that,  in  obedience  to  some  occult  law, 
as  little  understood  in  the  present  age  as  when  its  opera- 
tions were  first  detected  in  the  Netherlands,  Scotland  had 
in  the  times  of  the  Oolite,  as  certainly  as  now,  its  alter 


188  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

nating  groups  of  chill  and  of  genial  summers,  and  of  tem- 
perate and  severe  winters.  And  the  well-marked  rings  of 
its  fossil  Conifene  remain  to  attest  the  fact.  We  can  even 
determine  the  kind  of  soil  into  which  a  certain  proportion 
of  these  ancient  pines  struck  root.  It  was  extremely  shal- 
low in  some  localities,  and  lay  over  a  hard  bottom.  We 
find  that  some  of  the  fossil  stumps  shot  out  their  roots 
horizontally  immediately  as  they  entered  the  earth,  and 
sent  down  no  vertical  prolongations  of  the  trunk  into  the 
subsoil,  —  an  arrangement  still  common  among  the  roots 
of  trees  planted  on  a  shallow  stratum  of  soil  resting  on  a 
hard  bottom.  Further,  we  are  still  able  to  ascertain  that 
the  hard  bottom  that  underlay  the  soil  in  which  some  of 
the  Oolitic  pines  of  Helmsdale  grew  was  composed  of  Old 
Red  flagstone,  identical  in  its  mineral  composition  and 
organic  remains  with  what  is  now  known  as  Caithness 

flag- 
But  let  us  trace  the  history  of  a  single  pine-tree  of  the 
Oolite,  as  indicated  by  its  petrified  remains.  This  gnarled 
and  twisted  trunk  once  anchored  its  roots  amid  the  cran- 
nies of  a  precipice  of  dark-gray  sandstone,  that  rose  over 
some  nameless  stream  of  the  Oolite,  in  what  is  now  the 
north  of  Scotland.  The  rock,  which,  notwithstanding  its 
dingy  color,  Avas  a  deposit  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, formed  a  member  of  the  fish-beds  of  that  system, 
—  beds  that  were  charged  then,  as  now,  with  numerous 
fossils,  as  strange  and  obsolete  in  the  creation  of  the  Oolite 
as  in  the  creation  which  at  present  exists.  It  was  a  firm, 
undestnictible  stone,  covered  by  a  thin,  barren  soil ;  and 
the  twisted  rootlets  of  the  pine,  rejected  and  thrown  back- 
wards from  its  more  solid  planes,  had  to  penetrate  into  its 
narrow  fissures  for  a  straitened  and  meam-e  subsistence. 

O 

The  tree  grew  but  slowly:  in  considerably  more  than  half 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  189 

a  century  it  had  attained  to  a  diameter  of  little  more  than 
ten  inches  a  foot  over  the  soil ;  and  its  bent  and  twisted 
form  gave  evidence  of  the  life  of  hardship  to  which  it  was 
exposed.  It  was,  in  truth,  a  picturesque  rag  of  a  tree,  that 
for  the  first  few  feet  twisted  itself  round  like  an  overborne 
wrestler  struggling  to  escape  from  under  his  enemy,  and 
then  struck  out  an  abrupt  angle,  and  stretched  itself  like 
a  bent  arm  over  the  stream.  It  must  have  resembled,  on 
its  bald  eminence,  that  pine-tree  of  a  later  time  described 
by  Scott,  that  high  above  "  ash  and  oak," 

"  Cast  anchor  in  the  rifted  rock, 
And  o'er  the  giddy  chasm  hung 
His  shattered  trunk,  and  frequent  flung, 
Where  seemed  the  cliffs  to  meet  on  high, 
His  boughs  athwart  the  narrowed  sky." 

The  seasons  passed  over  it :  every  opening  spring  gave  its 
fringe  of  tenderer  green  to  its  spiky  foliage,  and  every 
returning  autumn  saw  it  shed  its  cones  into  the  stream 
below.  Many  a  delicate  fern  sprang  up  and  decayed 
around  its  gnarled  and  fantastic  root,  single-leaved  and 
simple  of  form,  like  the  Scolopendria  of  our  caverns  and 
rock  recesses,  or  fretted  into  many  a  slim  pinnate  leaflet, 
like  the  minute  maiden-hair  or  the  graceful  lady-fern. 
Flying  reptiles  have  perched  amid  its  boughs ;  the  light- 
winged  dragon-fly  has  darted  on  wings  of  gauze  through 
the  openings  of  its  lesser  twigs ;  the  tortoise  and  the  lizard 
have  hybernated  during  the  chills  of  winter  amid  the  hol- 
lows of  its  roots;  for  many  years  it  formed  one  of  the 
minor  features  in  a  wild  picturesque  scene,  on  which  hu- 
man eye  never  looked  ;  and  at  length,  touched  by  decay, 
its  upper  branches  began  to  wither  and  bleach  white  in 
the  winds  of  heaven;  when  shaken  by  a  sudden  hurricane 
that  came  roaring  adown  the  ravine,  the  mass  of  rock  in 


100  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

which  it  had  been  anchored  at  once  gave  way,  and,  bear- 
ing fast  jammed  among  its  roots  a  fragment  of  the  mass 
•which  we  still  find  there,  and  from  which  we  read  a  por- 
tion of  its  story,  it  was  precipitated  into  the  foaming  ton 
rent.  Dancing  on  the  eddies,  or  lingering  amid  the  pools, 
or  shooting,  arrow-like,  adown  the  rapids,  it  at  length  finds. 
its  way  to  the  sea;  and  after  sailing  over  beds  of  massive 
coral,  —  the  ponderous  Isastrea  and  more  delicate  Tham- 
nastrea, — and  after  disturbing  the  Enaliosaur  and  Belem- 
nite  in  their  deep-green  haunts,  it  sinks,  saturated  with 
water,  into  a  bed  of  arenaceous  mud,  to  make  its  appear- 
ance, after  long  ages,  in  the  world  of  man,  —  a  marble 
mummy  of  the  old  Oolite  forests,  —  and  to  be  curiously 
interrogated  regarding  its  character  and  history. 

The  pines  of  our  Scotch  Oolite  —  some  of  them,  as  I 
have  shown,  or  rather  as  my  specimens  show,  of  exceed- 
ingly slow  growth  —  are  suggestive  of  a  temperate,  if  not 
severe  climate.  The  family  of  their  contempoi'aries,  how- 
ever, to  which  I  must  next  refer  as  not  less  characteristic 
of  the  flora  of  this  ancient  time  than  the  coniferae  them- 
selves, is  now  to  .be  found  in  a  state  of  nature  in  only  the 
warmer  regions  of  the  earth,  and  can  be  studied  in  this 
part  of  the  world  in  but  our  conservatories  and  green- 
houses. It  is  known  to  the  botanist  as  the  Cycadaceous 
family ;  and  at  least  two  of  its  genera,  Cycas  and  Zamia, 
we  find  well  represented  in  the  Oolitic  deposits  of  Scot- 
land. In  the  Zamia,  a  cylindrical,  squat,  scale-covered 
pedestal  is  fringed  along  its  upper  edge  by  a  ring  of  long 
pinnate  leaves,  that  radiate  outwards  like  the  spokes  of  a 
wheel  from  the  nave;  and,  placed  on  the  centre  of  the 
pedestal,  there  is,  when  the  plant  is  in  fruit,  a  handsome 
cone.  The  tout  ensemble  is  as  if  a  pine-apple,  with  the 
pot  in  which  it  grew,  and  with  its  leaves  arranged  like  a 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  191 

ruff  round  its  stem,  formed  altogether  but  one  plant.  The 
Oycas  is  usually  taller  than  Zamia;  the  leaves  also,  of 
the  compound  pinnate  character,  are  smaller  and  more 
bushy;  and  it  resembles,  as  a  whole,  a  decapitated  palm, 
with  a  coronal  of  fern  bound  atop,  as  if  to  conceal  the 
mutilation.  With  these  Cycadacae  there  flourished  in  the 
marshes  of  the  period  plants  of  a  family  still  widely  spread 
over  the  various  climatal  zones,  but  which  now  attain  to 
any  considerable  size  only  within  the  tropics.  I  refer  to 
the  Equisetacese,  or  horsetail  family,  —  slim,  cone-crowned 
plants,  fringed  with  green  verticillate  leaves,  or  branches 
rather,  and  which  in  this  country  are  rarely  thicker  than  a 
quill,  or  rarely  exceed  eighteen  inches  in  height,  but  which 
have  been  found  in  the  intertropical  swamps  of  South 
America  fifteen  feet  high,  and  three  inches  in  circumfer- 
ence at  the  lower  part  of  the  stem.  In  the  Oolite  of 
Scotland,  a  well-marked,  long-extinct  species,  the  JEquise- 
tuni  columnare  must  have  attained,  judging  from  the 
thickness  of  the  stem,  which  is  sometimes  full  three  inches 
in  diameter,  to  at  least  thrice  the  size  of  its  tropical  con. 
genera.  As  shown  by  its  remains,  which  occur  in  the 
lignite  shales  of  Brora,  it  must  have  been  a  plant  of  con- 
siderable elegance  of  form,  encircled  at  each  joint  in  some 
of  the  specimens  by  torus-like  mouldings  grooved  cross- 
wise, traversed  in  the  spaces  between  by  longitudinal 
markings,  delicately  punctulated,  and  gracefully  feathered 
from  root  to  pointed  top  by  its  verticillate  garlands  of 
spiky  leaves.  The  Lycopodiaceas  or  club-moss  family, 
existing  in  rather  massier  and  more  aboraceous  forms  than 
now,  though  reduced  in  a  greatly  more  than  equal  degree 
from  their  gigantic  congeners  of  the  Coal  Measures,  were 
also  abundant  (as  shown  by  the  rocks  of  Helmsdale)  in 
the  Oolitic  flora  of  Scotland  ;  and  with  these  there  min- 


192  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

uK'd  various  genera,  consisting  of  numerous  species  of' 
Avell-marked  ferns.  Ferns,  indeed,  so  far  as  we  yet  know, 
may  be  regarded  as  forming  the  base,  and  pines  the  apex, 
of  the  terrestrial  Oolitic  flora;  and  between  these  two 
extremes  most  of  its  other  productions  seem  to  have 
ranged.  The  Cycadacese  possess  certain  characters  which 
belong  to  both :  they  are,  if  I  may  so  speak,  fern-pines, 
with,  in  some  instances,  a  peculiarity  of  aspect  which 
seems  also  to  ally  them  to  the  palms.  Again,  the  Lyco- 
podiaccae,  intermediate  between  the  mosses  and  the  ferns, 
may  be  described  as  fern-mosses,  with  a  peculiarity  of 
aspect  in  some  of  the  Oolitic  species  that  seems  to  ally 
them  to  the  pines.  And  the  Equisetaceaa  belongs  to  at 
least  the  same  sub-class  as  the  ferns,  —  the  Acrogens. 
The  Palmar,  as  shown  by  the  English  deposits,  were  also 
present  in  the  Oolitic  flora:  nor  is  it  probable  that  a 
species  of  vegetation  which  the  old  Yorkshire  of  the 
Oolite  possessed,  the  old  Scotland  of  the  Oolite  should 
have  wanted ;  though  I  have  not  yet  succeeded  in  finding 
the  remains  of  palms  in  any  of  our  Scotch  deposits. 

The  animal  productions  of  our  country  during  this  early 
period  were  divided,  like  those  of  the  present  time,  into 
the  four  great  Cuvierian  divisions,  all  of  which  we  still 
find  in  a  fossil  state  in  our  rocks.  Corals  akin  to  the  trop- 
ical forms,  —  some  of  them  of  great  size,  —  with  star-fishes 
and  sea-eggs,  represent  the  radiata ;  a  fossil  lobster  which 
occurs  in  the  Lias  of  Cromarty  somewhat  meagrely  repre- 
sents the  articulata.  The  shelled  mollusca  we  find  very 
largely  represented  in  almost  all  their  classes  and  families, 
from  the  high  Cephalopods  to  the  low  Brachipods ;  and  in 
this  division  the  peculiar  character  of  the  Oolitic  system  is 
more  strongly  impressed  than  even  on  its  flora.  Its  corals, 
though  many  of  them  of  great  size,  as  I  have  just  said, 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  193 

and  of  elegant  form,  might  almost  pass  for  those  of  the 
intertropical  seas  of  the  present  day ;  nor  are  its  Crustacea 
and  insects,  even  where  best  preserved,  as  in  the  Oolites 
of  England,  of  a  character  widely  different  from  those 
which  still  exist.  But  by  much  the  larger  part  of  its 
mollusca  bear  the  stamp  of  a  fashion  that  has  perished. 
It  is  chiefly,  however,  in  its  molluscs  of  the  first  class, — 
the  Cephalopods,  —  creatures  of  a  high  standing  in  their 
division,  and  represented  in  the  present  day  by  the  nauti- 
lus and  the  cuttle-fish,  that  we  recognize  in  its  fullest  extent 
this  extinct  peculiarity  of  type  and  form.  Its  Brachipods, 
chiefly  terebratulae,  not  unfrequent  in  the  Sutherland  Ooli- 
tes, and  in  the  Lias  of  Cromarty  and  Skye,  —  its  periwin- 
kles, whelks,  avicula?,  pinna,  pectens,  oysters,  and  mussels, 
few  of  them  wanting  in  any  of  our  Scotch  Liassic  or  Ooli- 
tic deposits,  and  many  of  them  very  abundant,  though  all 
specifically  extinct,  present  us,  though  with  a  large  admix- 
ture of  strange  and  exotic  forms,  with  many  other  forms 
with  which,  generically,  at  least,  we  are  familiar.  But 
among  the  Cephalopods  all  is  strange  and  unwonted ;  and 
their  vast  numbers  —  greater  at  this  period  of  the  world's 
history  than  in  any  former  or  any  after  time  —  have  the 
effect  of  imparting  their  own  unfamiliar  character  to  the 
whole  molluscan  group  of  the  Oolite.  I  need  but  refer  to 
two  families  of  these,  —  the  Belemnite  family  and  the  fam- 
ily of  the  Ammonites ;  both  of  them  so  remarkable,  that 
they  attracted  in  their  rocks  -the  notice  of  the  untaught 
inhabitants  of  both  England  and  Scotland,  and  excited 
their  imagination  to  the  point  at  which  myths  and  fables 
are  produced,  long  ere  Geology  existed  as  a  name  or  was 
known  as  a  science.  The  Belemnites  are  the  old  thunder- 
bolts of  the  north  of  Scotland,  that,  in  virtue  of  their  sup- 
posed descent  from  heaven,  were  deemed  all  potent  in 

17 


l'J4  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

certain  cases  of  bewitchment  and  the  Ammonites  are 
those  charmed  snakes  of  the  mediaeval  legend, 

"  That  each  one 

Was  changed  into  a  coil  of  stone, 
When  holy  Hilda  prayed." 

The  exact  affinities  of  the  Belemnite  family  have  formed  a 
subject  of  controversy  of  late  years  among  our  highest 
authorities, — men  such  as  Professor  Owen  taking  up  one 
side,  and  men  such  as  Dr.  Mautell  the  other.  But  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  it  more  nearly  approached  to  our 
existing  cuttle-fishes  than  to  any  other  living  animals; 
while  there  is  no  question  that  its  contemporary  the  Am- 
monite is  now  most  nearly  represented,  though  of  course 
only  approximately,  by  the  nautilus.  The  Belemnite  ex- 
isted in  some  of  its  species  throughout  all  the  formations 
of  the  great  Secondary  division,  but  neither  during  those 
of  the  Palaeozoic  nor  yet  of  the  Tertiary  divisions ;  the 
Ammonite,  on  the  other  hand,  though  in  an  extreme  and 
aberrant  form,  preceded  it  by  several  formations,  but  be- 
came extinct  at  the  same  time,  —  neither  Ammonite  nor 
Belemnite  outliving  the  deposition  of  the  Chalk. 

The  first  great  division  of  the  animal  kingdom,  the 
vertebrata,  was  represented  in  Scotland  during  the  Oolitic 
period  by  fishes  and  reptiles.  Its  fishes  seem  to  have  been 
restricted  to  two  orders,  —  that  placoid  order  to  which  the 
existing  sharks  belong,  and  that  ganoid  order,  now  well- 
nigh  worn  out  in  creation,  to  which  the  Lepidosteus  of 
the  North  American  lakes  and  rivers  belongs,  and  to  which 
I  incidentally  referred  in  connection  with  the  Lepidotus 
of  the  Weald.  I  have  found  in  the  island  of  Eigg  beds 
of  a  limestone  composed  almost  entirely  of  fossil  shells, 
which  were  strewed  over  with  the  teeth  of  an  extinct 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  195 

genus  of  sharks,  the  Hybodonts;  and  I  have  seen  the 
dorsal  spines  of  the  same  placoid  division  occasionally 
occurring  among  the  Oolites  of  Sutherland  and  the  Lias 
of  Eathie.  And  scales,  cerebral  plates,  and  in  some  in- 
stances considerable  portions  of  individuals  of  the  ganoidal 
species,  glittering  in  the  enamel  to  which  they  owe  their 
name,  occur  in  all  the  Oolitic  deposits  of  Scotland.  Of 
our  Scottish  reptiles  of  the  Oolite  we  have  still  a  good 
deal  to  learn.  I  was  fortunate  enough  in  1844  to  find  in 
a  deposit  of  Eigg,  and  again  at  Helmsdale  in  1849,  the 
remains  of  several  of  its  more  characteristic  Enaliosaurs, 
or  bepaddled  reptiles  of  the  sea;  at  Helmsdale  I  found 
vertebral  joints  of  the  Ichthyosaurus  in  a  conglomerate 
lower  in  the  Oolite ;  and  in  Eigg,  in  a  stratum  composed 
of  littoral  univalves,  vertebral  joints,  phalanges,  and  por- 
tions of  the  humerus  and  of  the  pelvic  arch  of  Plesiosau- 
rus,  together  with  the  limb-bones  of  crocodileans,  and 
fragments  of  the  carapace  of  a  tortoise.  Previous,  how- 
ever, to  even  the  earlier  date  of  my  discoveries,  the  tooth 
of  a  Saurian  had  been  found  in  the  Sutherlandshire  Oolite 
by  Mr.  (now  Sir  Roderick)  Murchison,  and  the  limb-bone 
of  a  Chelonian  with  a  sauroid  vertebra,  in  the  outlier  of 
the  Moray  shire  Weald  at  Linksfield.  My  collection,  how- 
ever, though  still  very  inadequate  in  this  department,  con- 
tains, in  quantity  at  least,  and,  I  am  disposed  to  think,  in 
variety  also,  some  eight  or  ten  times  more  of  the  reptilian 
remains  of  Scotland,  during  the  Secondary  ages,  than  all 
the  other  collections  of  the  kingdom.  They  at  least  serve 
to  demonstrate  that  the  Oolitic  period  in  what  is  now  our 
country  was,  as  in  England  and  on  the  Continent,  a  period 
of  huge  and  monstrous  reptiles,  —  that  the  bepaddled 
Enaliosaurs,  the  strange  reptilian  predecessors  of  the  Ce- 
tacea,  haunted  our  seas  in  at  least  two  of  their  generic 


196  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

forms,  —  that  of  the  Ichthyosaur  and  that  of  the  Ple- 
siosaur;  that  our  livers  were  frequented  by  formidable 
crocodiles ;  and  that  tortoises  of  various  perished  species 
lived  in  our  lakes  and  marshes,  or,  according  to  their  na- 
tures, disported  on  the  drier  grounds.  Nor  is  it  probable 
that  the  other  reptilian  monsters  of  the  time,  the  con- 
temporaries of  these  creatures  in  England,  would  have 
been  wanting  here.  We  may  safely  infer  that  flocks  of 
Pterodactyles  —  reptiles  mounted  on  bat-like  wings,  and 
as  wild  and  monstrous  in  aspect  and  proportion  as  roman- 
cer of  the  olden  time  ever  feigned  —  fluttered  through 
the  tall  pine-forests,  or  perched  on  the  cycadeas  and  the 
tree-ferns;  that  the  colossal  Iguanodon  and  gigantic  Hy- 
laeosaurus  browsed  on  the  succulent  equisetaceae  of  the 
low  meadows;  that  the  minute  Amphitherium,  an  insec- 
tivorous mammal  of  the  period,  lodged  among  the  ferns 
on  the  drier  grounds,  where  extinct  grasshoppers  chirped 
throughout  the  long  bright  summer,  and  antique  coleoptera 
burrowed  in  the  sand ;  and  that  far  off  at  sea  there  were 
moments  when  the  sun  gleamed  bright  on  the  polished 
sides  of  the  enormous  Cetiosaurus,  as  it  rose  from  the  bot- 
tom to  breathe.  But  I  must  close  this  part  of  my  subject, 
—  the  Scottish  flora  and  fauna  of  the  Oolite,  —  on  which 
my'narrow  limits  permit  me,  as  you  see,  to  touch  at  merely 
a  few  salient  points,  —  with  two  brief  remarks.  First, 
So  rich  was  its  flora,  that  its  remains  formed  on  the  east 
coast  of  Sutherland  a  coal,  or  rather  lignite  field,  so  con- 
siderable that  it  was  wrought  for  greatly  more  than  a  cen- 
turv> — at  one  time  to  such  effect,  that  during  the  twelve 
years  which  intervened  between  1814  and  1826,  no  fewer 
than  seventy  thousand  tons  of  coal  were  extracted  from 
one  pit.  Second,  The  strange  union  which  we  find  in  the 
-ame  beds  of  trees  that  seem  to  have  languished  under 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  197 

chill  and  severe  skies,  with  plants,  corals,  and  shells  of  a 
tropical  or  serai-tropical  character,  need  not  be  regarded 
as  charged  with  aught  like  conflicting  evidence  respecting 
the  climatal  conditions  of  the  time.  Climate  has  its  zones 
marked  out  as  definitely  by  thousands  of  feet  on  our  hill- 
sides as  by  degrees  of  latitude  on  the  surface  of  the  globe ; 
and  if  the  Scotland  of  the  Oolitic  period  was,  as  is  prob- 
able, a  mountainous  country  traversed  by  rivers,  produc- 
tions of  an  intertropical,  and  of  even  a  semi-arctic  char- 
acter, may  have  been  not  only  produced  within  less  than 
a  day's  journey  of  each  other,  but  their  remains  may  have 
bejtm  mingled  by  land-floods,  as  we  find  the  huge  corals  of 
Helmsdale  blent  with  its  slow-growing  pines,  among  the 
debris  of  some  littoral  bed.  The  poet's  exquisite  descrip- 
tion of  Lebanon  suggests,  I  am  disposed  to  think,  the  true 
reading  of  the  enigma : 

"  Like  a  glory  the  broad  sun 
Hangs  over  sainted  Lebanon, 
Whose  head  in  wintry  grandeur  towers, 

And  whitens  with  eternal  sleet; 
While  summer,  in  a  vale  of  flowers, 

Is  sleeping  rosy  at  his  feet." 

The  mere  lists  of  the  botanist  and  zoologist  are  in  them- 
selves repulsive  and  un-ideaed;  and  yet  the  existences 
which  their  arbitrary  signs  represent  are  the  vital  marvels 
of  creation,  —  the  noble  forests,  fair  shrubs,  and  delicate 
flowers,  and  the  many-featured  denizens  of  the  animal 
world,  so  various  in  their  forms,  motions,  and  colors,  and 
so  wondrous  in  their  structure  and  their  instincts.  I  have 
been  presenting  you  this  evening  with  little  else  than  a 
dry  list  of  the  Scottish  productions  of  the  Wealden  and 
Oolitic  ages,  —  a  list  necessarily  imperfect,  and  all  the  more 
unsuggestive  from  the  circumstance  that,  as  myriads  of 

17* 


198  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

ages  had  elapsed  between  the  extinction  of  the  races  and 
families  which  its  signs  represent,  and  their  first  applica- 
tion as  slims,  so  these  signs,  in  their  character  as  vocables, 
belong  to  languages  as  dead  as  the  organisms  themselves. 
The  organisms  were  dead  and  buried,  and  converted  into 
lignite  or  stone,  long  ages  ere  there  was  language  enough 
in  the  world  to  furnish  them  with  names;  and  now  the 
«;••:!•  I  has  been  employed  to  designate  the  dead,  —  dead 
languages  to  designate  the  remains  of  dead  creations. 
Could  we  but  see  the  productions  of  our  country  as  they 
once  really  existed,  —  could  we  travel  backwards  into  the 
vanished  past,  as  we  can  descend  into  the  strata  that  con- 
tain their  remains,  and  walk  out  into  the  woods,  or  along 
the  sea-shores  of  old  Oolitic  Scotland,  —  we  should  be 
greeted  by  a  succession  of  marvels  strange  beyond  even 
the  conceptions  of  the  poet,  or  at  least  only  equalled  by 
the  creations  of  him,  who,  in  his  adventurous  song,  sent 
forth  the  Lady  Una  to  wander  over  a  fairy  land  of  dreary 
•wolds  and  trackless  forests,  whose  caverns  were  haunts  of 
dragons  and  satyrs,  and  its  hills  the  abodes 

"  Of  dreadful  beasts,  that,  when  they  drew  to  hande, 
Half-flying  and  half-floating,  in  their  haste, 

Did  with  their  largeness  measure  o'er  much  lande, 
And  made  wide  shadow  under  bulksome  waist, 

As  mountain  doth  the  valley  overcaste; 
And  trailing  scaly  tails  did  rear  afore 

Bodies  all  monstrous,  horibill,  and  vaste." 

Let  us,  however,  ere  we  part  for  the  evening,  adventure  a 
short  walk  into  the  wilds  of  the  Oolitic,  in  that  portion  of 
space  now  occupied  on  the  surface  of  the  globe  by  the 
north-eastern  hills  of  Sutherland,  where  they  abut  on  the 
jnvrij.jtniis  Onl. 

W  e  stand   on  an  elevated  wood-covered  ridge,  that  on 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  199 

the  one  hand  overlooks  the  blue  sea,  and  descends  on  the 
other  towards  a  broad  river,  beyond  which  there  spreads  a 
wide  expanse  of  a  mountainous,  forest-covered  country. 
The  higher  and   more  distant  hills  are  dark  with  pines; 
and,  save  that  the  sun,  already  low  in  the  sky,  is  flinging 
athwart   them   his   yellow  light   and   gilding,   high    over 
shaded  dells  and  the  deeper  valleys,  cliff,  and  copse,  and 
bare  mossy  summit,  the  general  coloring  of  the  background 
would  be  blue  and  cold.     But  the  ray  falls  bright  and 
warm  on  the  rich  vegetation  around  us,  —  tree-ferns,  and 
tall   club-mosses,   and   graceful   palms,  and   the  strangely 
proportioned  cycadaceaB,  whose  leaves  seem  fronds  of  the 
bracken  fixed  upon  decapitated  stumps;   and   along  the 
banks  of  the  river  we  see  tall,  intensely  green  hedges  of 
the   feathered   equisetacea3.     Brown   cones   and  withered 
spiky   leaves   strew  the   ground;   and   scarce   a   hundred 
yards  away  there  is  a  noble  Araucarian,  that  raises,  sphere- 
like,  its   proud   head   more  than  a  hundred  feet  over  its 
fellows,  and  whose  trunk,  bedewed  with  odoriferous  bal- 
sam, glistens  to  the  sun.     The  calm  stillness  of  the  air 
makes  itself  faintly  audible  in  the  drowsy  hum  of  insects  ; 
there  is  a  gorgeous  light-poised  dragon-fly  darting  hither 
and   thither   through   the  minuter   gnat-like   groupes;   it 
settles  for  a  moment  on  one  of  the  lesser  ferns,  and  a  small 
insectivorous  creature,   scarce    larger  than   a  rat,  issues 
noiselessly  from  its  hole,  and  creeps  stealthily  towards  it. 
But  there  is  the  whirr  of  wings  heard  overhead,  and,  lo!  a 
monster  descends,  and  the  little  mammal  starts  back  into 
its  hole.     'Tis  a  winged  dragon  of  the  Oolite,  a  carnivor- 
ous reptile,  keen  of  eye  and  sharp  of  tooth,  and  that  to  the 
head  and  jaws  of  the  crocodile  adds  the  neck  of  a  bird,  the 
tail  of  an  ordinary  mammal,  and  that  floats  through  the  air 
on  leathern  wings  resembling  those  of  the  great  vampire 


200  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

bat.     We  have  seen,  in  the  minute,  rat-like  creature,  one 
of  the  two  known  mammals  of  this  vast  land  of  the  Oolite, 

—  the   insect-eating  AmpMtherium ;    and  in   the   flying 
reptile,  one  of  its  strangely  organized  Pterodactyls. 

But  hark !  what  sounds  are  these?  Tramp,  tramp,  tramp, 

—  crash,  crash.     Tree-fern  and  club-moss,  cycas  and  zamia, 
yield  to  the  force  and  momentum  of  some  immense  reptile, 
and  the  colossal  Iguanodon  breaks  through.     He  is  tall  as 
the  tallest  elephant,  but  from  tail  to  snout  greatly  more 
than   twice  as   long;  bears,  like   the   rhinoceros,  a  short 
horn  on   his  snout;   and   has  his  jaws  thickly  implanted 
with   saw-like   teeth.    But,  though   formidable  from  his 
great  weight  and  strength,  he  possesses  the  comparative 
inoffensiveness  of  the  herbivorous  animals ;  and,  with  no 
desire  to   attack,  and   no   necessity  to  defend,  he  moves 
slowly  onward,  deliberately  munching,  as  he   passes,  the 
succulent  stems  of  the  cycadacea.     The  sun  is  fast  sinking, 
and,  as  the  light  thickens,  the  reaches  of  the  neighboring 
river  display  their  frequent   dimples,  and  ever  and  anon 
long  scaly  backs  are  raised  over  its  surface.     Its  numerous 
crocodileans  are  astir ;  and  now  they  quit  the  stream,  and 
we  see  its  thick  hedge-like  lines  of  equisetaceae  open  and 
again  close,  as  they  rustle  through,  to  scour,  in  quest  of 
prey,  the  dank  meadows  that  line  its  banks.     There  are 
tortoises  that  will  this  evening  find  their  protecting  armor 
of  carapace  and  plastron  all  too  weak,  and  close  their  long 
lives  of  centuries.     And  now  we  saunter  downwards  to  the 
shore,  and   see  the  ground-swell   breaking  white  in  the 
calm  against  ridges  of  coral  scarce  less  white.     The  shores 
are  strewed  with  shells  of  pearl,  —  the  whorled  Ammonite 
and  the  Nautilus;  and  amid  the  gleam  of  ganoidal  scales, 
reflected  from  the  green  depths  beyond,  we  may  see  the 
phosphoric  trail   of  the  Belemnite,  and  its  path  is  oter 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  201 

shells  of  strange  form  and  name,  —  the  sedentary  Gryphaea, 
the  Perna,  and  the  Plagiostoma. 

But  lo!  yet  another  monster.  A  snake-like  form,  sur- 
mounted by  a  crocodilean  head,  rises  high  out  of  the  water 
within  yonder  coral  ledge,  and  the  fiery,  sinister  eyes  peer 
inquiringly  round,  as  if  in  quest  of  prey.  The  body  is  but 
dimly  seen ;  but  it  is  short  and  bulky  compared  with  the 
swan-like  neck,  and  mounted  on  paddles  instead  of  limbs ; 
so  that  the  entire  creature,  wholly  unlike  anything  which 
now  exists,  has  been  likened  to  a  boa  constrictor  threaded 
throngh  the  body  of  a  turtle.  We  have  looked  upon  the 
Plesiosaurus.  And  now  outside  the  ledge  there  is  a  huge 
crocodilean  head  raised ;  and  a  monstrous  eye,  huger  than 
that  of  any  other  living  creature,  —  for  it  measures  a  full 
foot  across,  —  glares  upon  the  slimmer  and  less  powerful 
reptile,  and  in  an  instant  the  long  neck  and  small  head  dis- 
appear. That  monster  of  the  immense  eye,  —  an  eye  so 
consti'ucted  that  its  focus  can  be  altered  at  will,  and  made 
to  comprise  either  near  or  distant  objects,  and  the  organ 
itself  adapted  either  to  examine  microscopically  or  to  ex- 
plore as  a  telescope, — is  another  be-paddled  reptile  of  the 
the  sea,  the  Ichthyosaurus,  or  fish-lizard.  But  the  night 
comes  on,  and  the  shadows  of  the  woods  and  rocks  deepen: 
there  are  uncouth  sounds  along  the  beach  and  in  the  forest ; 
and  new  monsters  of  yet  stranger  shape  are  dimly  dis- 
covered moving  amid  the  uncertain  gloom.  Reptiles,  rep- 
tiles, reptiles, — flying,  swimming,  waddling,  walking;  — 
the  age  is  that  of  the  cold-blooded,  ungenial  reptile ;  and, 
save  in  the  dwarf  and  inferior  forms  of  the  marsupials  and 
insectivora,  not  one  of  the  honest  mammals  has  yet  ap- 
peared. And  now  the  moon  rises  in  clouded  majesty ;  and 
now  her  red  wake  brightens  in  one  long  strip  of  the  dark 
sea*;  and  we  may  mark  where  the  Cetiosaurus,  a  sort  of 


202  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

reptilian  whale,  comes  into  view  as  it  crosses  the  lighted 
tract,  and  is  straightway  lost  in  the  gloom.  But  the  night 
grows  dangerous,  and  these  monster-haunted  woods  were 
not  planted  for  man.  Let  us  return  then  to  the  safer  and 
better  furnished  world  of  the  present  time,  and  to  our 
secure  and  quiet  homes. 


LECTURE   FIFTH. 

The  Lias  of  the  Hill  of  Eathie  — The  Beauty  of  its  Shores— Its  Deposits,  how 
formed  —  Their  Animal  Organisms  indicative  of  successive  Platforms  of  Exist- 
ences—  The  Laws  of  Generation  and  of  Death  —  The  Triassic  System  —  Its 
Economic  and  Geographic  Importance  —  Animal  Footprints,  but  no  Fossil 
Organisms  found  in  it  —  The  Science  of  Ichnology  originated  in  this  fact  —  Illus- 
trated by  the  appearance  of  the  Compensation  Pond,  near  Edinburgh,  in  1842  — 
The  Phenomenon  indicated  by  the  Footprints  in  the  Triassic  System  — The  Trias- 
sic and  Permian  Systems  once  regarded  as  one,  under  the  name  of  the  New  Red 
Sandstone  —  The  Coal  Measures  in  Scotland  next  in  Order  ot' Succession  to  the 
Triassic  System  —  Differences  in  the  Organisms  of  the  two  Systems  —  Extent 
of  the  Coal  Measures  of  Scotland  —  Their  Scenic  Peculiarities  —  Ancient  Flora 
of  the  Carboniferous  Period  —  Its  Fauna  —  Its  Reptiles  and  Reptile  Fishes 
—  The  other  Organisms  of  the  Period  —  Great  Depth  of  the  System  —  The  Pro- 
cesses by  which  during  countless  Ages  it  had  been  formed. 

THE  Lias  forms,  as  I  have  already  had  occasion  to  re- 
mark, the  base  of  the  great  Oolitic  system.  I  dealt  in  my 
last  address  with  the  productions,  vegetable  and  animal,  of 
those  long  ages  of  the  world's  history  which  the  various 
deposits  of  this  system  represent,  and  attempted  a  restora- 
tion of  some  of  its  more  striking  scenes,  as  they  must  have 
existed  of  old,  in  what  is  now  Scotland.  But  in  glancing 
once  more  at  the  Lias,  we  must  pass  from  the  living  to  the 
dead,  —  from  the  vital  myriads  that  once  were,  to  the 
cemetery  that  contains  their  remains.  I  shall  select  as  my 
example  a  single  Liassic  deposit  of  Scotland,  but  in  several 
respects  one  of  the  most  remarkable,  —  that  of  Eathie,  on 
the  shores  of  the  Moray  Frith,  about  four  miles  from  the 
town  of  Cromarty.  And  in  visiting  it  in  its  character  as  a 
great  burial-ground, —  the  final  resting-place,  not  only  of 


204  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

perished  individuals,  but  also  of  extinct  tribes  and  races, 
and  in  scanning  its  strangely  sculptured  monuments,  rough- 
ened with  hieroglyphics,  to  which  living  nature  furnishes 
the  key,  we  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  indulge  in  some 
of  those  reflections  which  so  naturally  suggest  themselves 
in  solitary  churchyards,  or  among  the  tombs  of  the  ancient 
dead. 

The  hill  of  Eathie  is  a  picturesque  eminence  of  granitic 
gneiss,  largely  mixed  with  beds  of  hornblende  schist,  which 
extends,  in  a  long  precipitous  ridge,  some  five  or  six  hun- 
dred feet  in  height,  along  the  northern  side  of  the  Moray 
Frith,  and  forms  one  of  a  primary  chain  of  hills,  which,  in 
their  upheaval,  uptilted  deposits  of  the  Lias  and  Oolite. 
The  deposit  which  the  hill  Eathie  disturbed  is  exclusively 
a  Liassic  one  :  the  upturned  edge  of  the  base  of  the  forma- 
tion rests  against  the  bottom  of  the  hill ;  and  we  may  trace 
the  edges  of  its  various  upper  deposits  for  several  hundred 
feet  outwards,  bed  above  bed,  until,  apparently  near  the 
top  of  the  formation,  we  lose  them  in  the  sea.  There  is  a 
wild  beauty  on  the  shores  of  Eathie.  A  s'elvage  of  com- 
paratively level  ground,  that  occupies  the  space  between 
the  rocky  beach  and  an  inflection  of  the  hill,  seems  em- 
bosomed in  solitude;  the  naked  scaurs  and  furze-covered 
slopes,  where  the  fox  and  the  badger  breed,  interpose  their 
dizzy  fence  between  it  and  the  inhabited  portions  of  the 
country  above;  while  the  rough  unfrequented  shore  and 
wide-spreading  sea  form  the  secluding  barriers  below.  The 
only  human  dwellings  visible  are  the  minute  specks  of 
white  that  look  out  in  the  sunshine  from  the  dim  and 
diluted  blue  of  the  opposite  coast;  and  we  may  see  the 
lonely  frith  broadening  and  widening  as  it  recedes  from 
the  eye,  and  opens  to  the  ocean  in  a  direction  so  uninter- 
rupted by  land,  that  the  waves,  which,  when  the  wind 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  205 

blows  from  the  keen  north,  first  begin  to  break  on  the  dis- 
tant headlands,  and  then  come  running  up  the  coast,  like 
white  coursers,  may  have  heaved  their  first  undulating 
movements  under  the  polar  ice.  The  scene  seems  such  a 
one  as  the  anchorite  might  choose  to  wear  out  life  in,  far 
from  the  society  of  fellow-man ;  and  we  actually  find,  in 
exploring  its  bosky  thickets  of  wild  rose  and  sloe-thorn, 
that  some  anchorite  of  the  olden  time  did  make  choice  of 
it.  A  gray  shapeless  hillock  of  lichened  stone,  shaded  by 
luxuriant  tufts  of  fern,  still  bears  the  name  of  the  old 
chapel;  and  an  adjacent  spring,  on  whose  overhanging 
sprays  of  ivy  we  may  occasionally  detect  minute  tags  of 
linen  and  woollen  cloth,  —  the  offerings  of  a  long-derived 
superstition,  not  quite  extinct  in  the  district,  —  is  still 
known  as  the  Saint's  Well.  But  who  the  anchorite  was, 
tradition  has  long  since  forgot ;  and  it  was  only  last  year 
that  I  succeeded  in  recovering  the  name  of  the  saint  from 
an  old  man,  whose  father  had  been  a  farmer  on  the  land 
considerably  more  than  a  hundred  years  before.  The 
chapel  and  spring  had  been  dedicated,  he  said,  to  St.  Ken- 
nat,  —  a  name  which  we  need  scarce  look  for  in  the 
Romish  Calendar,  but  which  designated,  it  is  probable, 
one  of  our  old  Culdee  saints. 

The  various  beds  of  the  Eathie  deposit,  —  all,  save  the 
lowest,  which  consists  of  a  blue  adhesive  clay, — are  com- 
posed of  a  dark,  finely  laminated  shale ;  and,  varying  in 
thickness  from  thirty  feet  to  thirty  yards,  they  are  curi- 
ously separated  from  each  other  by  bands  of  fossiliferous 
limestone.  And  so  impalpable  a  substance  are  these 
shales,  that,  when  subjected  to  calcination,  which  is  neces- 
sary to  extract  the  bitumen  with  which  they  are  charged, 
and  which  gives  them  toughness  and  coherency,  they  re- 
solve into  a  powder,  used  occasionally,  from  its  extreme 

18 


206  LECTURES   ON'    GEOLOGY. 

fineness,  in  the  cleaning  of  polished  brass  and  copper. 
They  were  laid  down,  it  is  probable,  in  circumstances  similar 
to  those  in  which,  as  described  by  the  late  Captain  Basil 
Hall,  extensive  deposits  are  now  taking  place  in  the  Yellow 
Sea  of  China.  "At  sunset,"  says  Captain  Hall,  in  the 
narrative  of  his  voyage  to  Loo-Choo,  "  no  land  could  be 
perceived  from  the  mast-head,  although  we  were  in  less 
than  five  fathoms  water.  And  before  the  day  broke  next 
morning,  the  tide  had  fallen  a  whole  fathom,  which  brought 
the  ship's  bottom  within  three  feet  of  the  ground.  It  was 
soon  afterwards  discovered  that  she  was  actually  sailing 
along  with  her  keel  in  the  mud,  which  was  sufficiently  in- 
dicated by  a  long  yellow  train  in  our  wake.  Some  incon- 
venience was  caused  by  this  extreme  shallowness,  as  it  re- 
tarded our  headway,  and  affected  the  steering ;  but  there 
was  in  reality  not  much  danger,  as  it  was  ascertained,  by 
forcing  long  poles  into  the  ground,  that  for  many  fathoms 
below  the  surface  on  which  the  sounding  lead  rested,  and 
from  which  level  the  depth  of  water  is  estimated,  the  bot- 
tom consisted  of  nothing  but  mud  formed  of  an  impalp- 
able powder,  without  the  least  particle  of  sand  or  gravel." 
The  Liassic  deposit  of  Eathie  must  have  been  of  slow  de- 
position. It  consists  of  lamina  as  thin  as  sheets  of  paste- 
board, which,  of  course,  shows  that  there  was  but  little 
deposited  at  a  time,  and  pauses  between  each  deposit. 
And,  though  a  soft  muddy  surface  could  have  been  of  it- 
self no  proper  habitat  for  the  sedentary  animals,  —  serpulae, 
oysters,  gryphites,  and  terebratulas, —  we  can  find  farther, 
that  they  did,  notwithstanding,  find  footing  upon  it,  by  at- 
taching themselves  to  the  dead  shells  of  such  of  the  sailing 
or  swimming  molluscs,  Ammonites  and  Belcmnites,  as  died 
over  it,  and  left  upon  it  their  remains ;  from  which  we  in- 
fer that  the  pauses  must  have  been  very  protracted,  seeing 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  207 

that  they  gave  time  sufficient  for  the  Terebratulae,  —  shells 
that  never  moved  from  the  place  in  which  they  were  origi- 
nally fixed,  —  to  grow  up  to  maturity.  The  thin  leaves  of 
these  Liassic  volumes  must  have  been  slowly  formed  and 
deliberately  written ;  for  as  a  series  of  volumes,  reclining 
against  a  granite  pedestal  in  the  geologic  library  of  nature, 
I  used  to  find  pleasure  in  regarding  them.  The  limestone 
bands,  curiously  marbled  with  lignite,  ichthyolite,  and 
shell,  formed  the  stiff  boarding ;  and  the  thin  pasteboard- 
like  laminae  between,  —  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands  in 
number  in  even  the  slimmer  volumes,  —  composed  the 
closely  written  leaves.  For  never  did  characters  or  figures 
lie  closer  in  a  page  than  the  organisms  on  the  surfaces  of 
these  leaf-like  laminas.  Permit  me  to  present  you  from  my 
note-book  with  a  few  readings  taken  during  a  single  visit 
from  these  strange  pages. 

We  insinuate  our  lever  into  a  fissure  of  the  shale,  and 
turn  up  a  portion  of  one  of  the  laminae,  whose  surface  had 
last  seen  the  light  when  existing  as  part  of  the  bottom  of 
the  old  Liassic  sea,  when  more  than  half  the  formation  had 
still  to  be  deposited.  Is  it  not  one  of  the  prints  of  Sower- 
by's  "Mineral  Conchology"  that  has  opened  up  to  us? 
Nay,  the  shells  lie  too  thickly  for  that,  and  there  are  too 
many  repetitions  of  organisms  of  the  same  species.  The 
drawing,  too,  is  finer,  and  the  shading  seems  produced 
rather  by  such  a  degree  of  relief  in  the  figures  as  may  be 
seen  in  those  of  an  embossed  card,  than  by  any  arrangement 
of  lighter  and  darker  color.  And  yet  the  general  tone  of 
the  coloring,  though  dimmed  by  the  action  of  untold  cen- 
turies, is  still  very  striking.  The  ground  of  the  tablet  is 
of  a  deep  black,  while  the  colors  stand  out  in  various 
shades,  from  opaque  to  a  silvery  white,  and  from  silvery 
white  to  deep  gray.  There,  for  instance,  is  a  group  of 


208  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

large  Ammonites,  as  if  drawn  in  white  chalk;  there,  a  clus- 
ter of  minute  bivalves  resembling  Pectens,  each  of  which 
bears  its  thin  film  of  silvery  nacre;  there,  a  gracefully 
formed  Lima  in  deep  neutral  tint;  while,  lying  athwart 
the  page,  like  the  dark  hawthorn  leaf  in  Bewick's  well- 
known  vignette,  there  are  two  slim  sword-shaped  leaves 
colored  in  deep  umber.  We  lay  open  a  portion  of  another 
page.  The  centre  is  occupied  by  a  large  Myacites,  still 
bearing  a  warm  tint  of  yellowish  brown,  and  which  must 
have  been  an  exceedingly  brilliant  shell  in  its  day ;  there 
is  a  Modiola,  a  smaller  shell,  but  similar  in  tint,  though  not 
quite  so  bright,  lying  a  few  inches  away,  with  an  assem- 
blage of  dark  gray  Gryphites  of  considerable  size  on  the 
one  side,  and  on  the  other  a  fleet  of  minute  Terebratulas, 
that  had  been  borne  down  and  covered  up  by  some 
fresh  deposit  from  above,  when  riding  at  their  anchors. 
We  turn  over  yet  another  page.  It  is  occupied  exclu- 
sively by  Ammonites  of  various  sizes,  but  all  of  one 
species,  as  if  a  whole  argosy,  old  and  young,  convoyes  and 
convoyed,  had  been  wrecked  at  once,  and  sent  disabled 
and  dead  to  the  bottom.  And  here  we  open  yet  another 
page  more.  It  bears  a  set  of  extremely  slender  Belem- 
nites.  They  lie  along  and  athwart,  and  in  every  possible 
angle,  like  a  heap  of  boarding-pikes  thrown  carelessly 
down  a  vessel's  deck  on  the  surrender  of  the  crew.  Here, 
too,  is  an  assemblage  of  bright  black  plates,  that  shine  like 
pieces  of  japan  work,  the  cerebral  plates  of  some  fish 
of  the  ganoid  order ;  and  here  an  immense  accumulation 
of  minute  glittering  scales  of  a  circular  form.  We  apply 
the  microscope,  and  find  every  little  interstice  in  the  page 
covered  with  organisms.  And  leaf  after  leaf,  for  tens  and 
hundreds  of  feet  together,  repeats  the  same  strange  story." 
The  great  Alexandrian  library,  with  its  unsununed  tonic; 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  209 

of  ancient  literature,  the  accumulation  of  long  ages,  was 
but  a  poor  and  meagre  collection,  scarce  less  puny  in  bulk 
than  recent  in  date,  when  compared  with  this  vast  and 
wondrous  library  of  the  Scotch  Lias. 

Now,  this  Eathie  deposit  is  a  crowded  burying-ground, 
greatly  more  charged  with  remains  of  the  dead,  and  more 
thoroughly  saturated  with  what  was  once  animal  matter, 
than  ever  yet  was  city  burying-ground  in  its  most  unsani- 
tary state.  Every  limestone  band  or  nodule,  yields,  when 
struck  by  the  hammer,  the  heavy  fetid  odor  of  corruption 
and  decay;  and  so  charged  is  the  laminated  shale  with  an 
animal-derived  bitumen,  that  it  flames  in  the  fire  as  if 
it  had  been  steeped  in  oil,  and  yields  a  carburetted  hydro- 
gen gas  scarce  less  abundantly  than  some  of  our  coals 
of  vegetable  origin.  The  fact  of  the  existence,  through- 
out all  the  geological  ages,  of  the  great  law  of  death,  is 
a  fact  which  must  often  press  upon  the  geologist.  Almost 
all  the  materials  of  his  history  he  derives  from  cenotaphs 
and  catacombs.  He  finds  no  inconsiderable  portion  of 
the  earth's  crust  composed  of  the  remains  of  its  ancient 
inhabitants,  —  not  of  dead  individuals  merely,  but  also 
of  dead  species,  dead  genera,  nay,  of  even  dead  creations ; 
and  here,  where  the  individual  dead  lie  as  thickly  on  the 
surface  of  each  of  many  thousand  layers  as  leaves  along 
the  forest  glades  in  autumn,  —  here,  where  all  the  species 
and  many  of  the  genera  are  dead,  nay,  where  the  whole 
creation  represented  by  its  multitudinous-  organisms  is 
dead,  —  the  great  problem  which  this  law  of  death  pre- 
sents comes  upon  the  explorer  in  its  most  palpable  and 
urgent  form.  The  noble  verses  of  James  Montgomery, 
somewhat  exagerative  in  their  character  when  addressed 
to  a  molehill,  become  as  remarkable  for  their  sober  pro- 
priety as  for  their  beauty  when  employed  here: 

18* 


210  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

"  Tell  me,  thou  dust  beneath  my  feet, 

Thou  dust  that  once  hadst  breath,  — 
Tell  me  how  many  mortals  meet 
In  this  small  hill  of  death? 

By  wafting  winds  and  flooding  rains, 

From  ocean,  earth  and  sky, 
Collected,  here  the  frail  remains 

Of  slumbering  millions  lie. 

The  mole  that  scoops,  with  curious  toil, 

Her  subterranean  bed, 
Thinks  not  she  ploughs  so  rich  a  soil, 

And  mines  among  the  dead. 

But  0 !  where'er  she  turns  the  ground, 

My  kindred  earth  I  see; 
Once  every  atom  of  this  mound 

Lived,  breathed,  and  felt  like  me. 

Like  me,  these  elder-born  of  clay 

Enjoyed  the  cheerful  light, 
Bore  the  brief  burden  of  a  day, 

And  went  to  rest  at  night. 

Mcthinks  this  dust  yet  heaves  with  breath, 

Ten  thousand  pulses  beat : 
Tell  me,  in  this  small  hill  of  death 

How  many  mortals  meet." 

What  does  this  inexorable  law  of  death  mean,  or  on 
what  principle  does  it  depend  ?  In  our  own  species  it  has 
a  moral  significancy, —  "Death  reigned  from  Adam,"  and 
though  a  pardonable  mistake,  no  longer  insisted  on  by 
at  least  theologians  of  the  higher  class,  the  same  moral 
character,  as  a  reflex  influence,  has  been  made  to  attach  to 
it  in  its  inevitable  connection  with  the  inferior  animals. 
But  in  them,  it  seems  to  have  no  moral  significancy. 

Bacon  makes  a  shrewd  distinction,  in  one  of  his  Essays, 
between  "death  as  the  wages  of  sin,"  and  death  as  "a 
tribute  due  to  nature;"  and  we  can  now  fully  appreciate 


LECTURES  OX  GEOLOGY.  211 

the  value  of  /the  distinction.  For  we  now  know  that 
while,  as  the  wages  of  sin,  it  has  reigned  from  but  the 
fall  of  Adam,  it  has  reigned  as  a  tribute  due  to  nature 
throughout  the  long  lapse  of  the  geologic  ages  from  the 
first  beginnings  of  life  upon  our  planet.  What,  then,  does 
this  inexorable  law  of  death  mean  ?  and  on  what  principle 
does  it  depend? 

It  was  in  mere  cobweb  toils  that  those  Sadducees  who 
believed  "  not  in  angel,  neither  in  spirit,"  endeavored  to 
entangle  our  Saviour,  when  they  propounded  to  him  the 
case  of  the  woman  with  the  seven  husbands,  and  de- 
map  ded  whose  wife  of  the  seven  she  was  to  be  in  the 
Resurrection.  But  there  was  a  profundity  in  the  reply, 
which  the  theologians  of  nearly  two  thousand  years  have, 
I  am  disposed  to  think,  failed  adequately  to  comprehend. 
"  The  children  of  this  world  marry  and  are  given  in  mar- 
riage," he  said,  "but  the  children  of  the  Resurrection 
neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage,  neither  can  they 
die  any  more."  Now  there  seems  to  be  a  strictly  logical 
sequence  between  the  two  distinct  portions  of  this  pro- 
position, —  the  enunciation  that  the  denizens  of  the  state 
after  death  do  not  marry,  and  the  enunciation  that  they 
do  not  die,  which  for  eighteen  centuries  there  was  not 
science  enough  in  the  world  adequately  to  appreciate. 
The  marriage  provision  was  simply  a  provision  tanta- 
mount to  the  original  injunction,  not  of  paradise  merely, 
but  of  every  preceding  period  in  which  there  were  organi- 
zations of  matter  possessed  by  the  vital  principle:  "In- 
crease and  multiply,  and  replenish  the  earth."  And  all 
geology  presses  upon  us  the  conviction,  so  powerfully 
enforced  by  the  Liassic  deposit  at  Eathie,  that,  from  the 
very  nature  of  things,  the  law  of  generation  and  the  law 
of  death,  wherever  space  is  limited,  cannot  be  dissociated. 


212  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

Each  of  the  multitudinous  leaves  of  the  Lias  formed  in 
succession  an  upper  surface,  or  platform,  on  which,  for  a 
certain  period  of  time  in  the  world's  history,  living  and 
sentient  creatures  pursued  the  several  instincts  of  their 
natures,  and  then  ceased  to  exist.    And  so  immense,  in 
many  instances,  was  the  crowd,  that,  had   the  existence 
of  two  platforms  been  restricted  to  the  occupancy  of  only 
one  platform,  they  would  have  lacked  footing.    A  dense 
crowd  of  living  men  may  find  ample  standing-room  in  an 
ancient  city  churchyard,  occupying,  as  they  do,  a  different 
stratum  of  space  from  that  occupied  by  the  dead;   but 
were  the  dead  to  revive  and  arise,  it  would  be  impossible 
that  the  living  could  find  in  it  the  necessary  standing- 
room   any  longer.      They  would  be   jostled   from   their 
places  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the  inclosing  wall.     And 
let  us  remember,  that  "  the  great  globe  itself  which  we 
inherit "  is  all  one  vast  burying-ground ;  nor  is  it  to  one 
stratum  that  the  densely  piled  remains  of  its  dead  are 
restricted,  nor  to  one  hundred,  nor  to  one  thousand,  nor 
yet  to  one  hundred  thousand  strata.     Even  in  this  deposit 
of  the  Eathie  Lias,  the  successive  platforms  of  the  dead 
may  be  reckoned  up  by  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands; 
and  it  would  be  more  possible  that  a  fertile  field  should 
have  growing  upon  it  at  once  the  harvests  of  ten  thousand 
succeeding  autumns,  than  that  any  one  of  the  platforms 
should  have  living  upon  it  at  once  the  existences  of  all  the 
innumerable  platforms  above  and  below.     The  great  law 
"  increase  and  multiply "  gave  to  each  platform  its  count- 
less crowds ;  and  to  make  room  for  the  continuous  opera- 
tion of  this  law,  the  other  great  law  of  death  came  into 
action,  and  so  the  generations  of  succeeding  periods  found 
space  to  pursue  their  various  instincts  on  platforms  com- 
posed in  no  small  part  of  the  perished  generations  from 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  213 

which  they  had  sprung.  Throughout  the  whole  incalcula- 
ble past  of  our  planet,  —  throughout  all  its  unmeasured  and 
immeasurable  periods,  —  the  laws  of  production  and  decay 
have  gone  inseparably  together;  they  were  twin  stars  on 
the  horizon,  tinged  by  the  complementary  colors,  and  so 
inseparably  associated,  that  the  appearance  of  the  one 
always  heralded  the  rise  of  the  other.  And  to  my  mind 
at  least,  it  does  seem  demonstrative  of  the  full-orbed  and 
perfect  wisdom  of  the  Divine  Master  of  the  Theolo- 
gians, that  He,  with  that  quiet  simplicity  which  Pascal  so 
well  designates  the  characteristic  style  of  Godhead,  and 
with  a  logic  too  profound  to  be  appreciated  at  the  time, 
should  have  coupled  together  the  twin  laws  of  production 
and  decay,  as  equally  inadmissible  into  that  future  state  in 
which  the  life  of  man  is  to  be  no  longer 

"  Summed  up  in  birthdays  and  in  sepulchres." 

"  The  children  of  the  resurrection  neither  marry  nor  are 
given  in  marriage,  neither  can  they  die  any  more." 

From  the  Oolite,  with  its  Liassic  base,  we  pass  on  to 
the  Triassic  system,  —  a  deposit  less  characteristically  de- 
veloped in  England  than  on  the  Continent,  but  of  much 
economic  importance,  from  those  vast  beds  of  rock-salt 
which,  in  Britain,  at  least,  are  exclusively  restricted  to 
this  system;  and  of  considerable  geographic  importance, 
from  its  great  lateral  extent.  In  Scotland1  it  occupies 
rather  more  than  a  hundred  square  miles  of  surface,  chiefly 
in  Dumfriesshire,  along  the  northern  shores  of  the  Solway, 

1  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  red  rocks  overlying  the  coal 
of  Cumberland,  the  red  sandstones  of  Corncockle  Muir,  near  Dumfries, 
the  Ayrshire  red  sandstones,  and  those  of  the  Isle  of  Arran,  are  all  of  the 
Permian,  not  Triassic,  epoch.  See  "  Siluria,"  new  edition,  p.  351.— 

w.  s.  s. 


214  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

and  in  the  line  of  boundary  between  the  two  kingdoms, 
where  it  can  boast,  among  its  other  celebrities,  of  the 
famous  village  of  Gretna  Green,  and  the  whole  of  Gretna 
parish.  In  England  it  is  chiefly  remarkable,  in  a  scenic 
point  of  view,  for  its  extreme  flatness :  its  main  feature  is 
a  want  of  features.  It  was,  however,  at  one  time,  noto- 
rious for  its  ponds  and  marshes,  consequents  of  the  imper- 
fect drainage  incident  to  flat  low  surfaces  when  of  great 
extent ;  and  in  Scotland,  though  so  much  more  limited  in 
area,  it  bears  this  character  still.  No  fossil  organisms  have 
yet  been  found  in  this  deposit  in  Scotland :  it  contains, 
however,  in  abundance,  traces  of  the  ancient  inhabitants, 
even  more  curiously  imprinted  on  the  stone  than  if  they 
had  left  in  it  the  remains  of  their  framework;  and  is 
interesting  as  the  field  in  which,  from  the  sedulous  study 
of  these,  and  undeterred  by  the  skepticism  of  some  of  our 
highest  authorities,  the  late  Dr.  Duncan,  of  Ruthwell,  laid 
the  first  foundations  of  that  curious  and  instructive  de- 
partment of  geologic  science  since  known  as  Ichnology. 
The  strange  reptiles  of  this  ancient  time,  in  passing  over 
the  tide-uncovered  beaches  of  the  district,  left  their  foot- 
steps imprinted  in  the  yielding  sand ;  and  in  this  sand,  no 
longer  yielding,  but  hardened  long  ages  ago  into  solid 
rock,  the  footsteps  still  remain.  And  with  truly  wonder- 
ful revelations, — revelations  of  things  the  most  evanescent 
in  themselves,  and  of  incidents  regarding  which  it  might 
seem  extravagant  to  expect  that  any  record  should  remain, 
do  we  find  these  strange  markings  charged.  They  even 
tell  us  how  the  rains  of  that  remote  age  descended,  and 
how  its  winds  blew. 

Let  us  see  whether  we  cannot  indicate  a  few  of  at  least 
the  simpler  principles  of  this  department  of  science.  The 
artificial  sheet  of  water  situated  among  the  Pentlands,  and 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  215 

known  as  the  Compensation  Pond,  was  laid  dry,  during 
the  warm  summer  of  1842,  to  the  depth  of  ten  fathoms; 
and  as  a  lake  bottom  ten  fathoms  from  the  surface,  is  not 
often  seen,  I  visited  it,  in  the  hope  of  acquiring  a  few 
facts  that  might  be  of  use  to  me  among  the  rocks.  What 
first  struck  me,  in  surveying  the  brown  sun-baked  bottom 
from  the  shore,  was  the  manner  in  which  it  had  cracked, 
in  the  drying,  into  irregularly  polygonal  partings,  and  that 
the  ripple-markings  with  which  it  was  fretted  extended 
along  only  a  narrow  border,  where  the  water  had  been 
shallow  enough  to  permit  the  winds  or  superficial  currents 
to  act  on  the  soft  clay  beneath.  As  I  descended,  I  found 
the  surface  between  the  partings  indented  with  numerous 
well-marked  tracks  of  the  feet  of  men  and  animals,  made 
while  the  clay  was  yet  soft,  and  now  fixed  in  it  by  the 
drying  process,  like  the  mark  of  the  stamp  in  an  ancient 
brick.  And  some  of  these  tracks  were  charged  with 
little  snatches  of  incident,  which  they  told  in  a  style 
remarkably  intelligible  and  clear.  At  one  place,  for  in- 
stance, I  found  the  footprints  of  some  four  or  five  sheep. 
They  struck  out  towards  the  middle  of  the  hollow,  but 
turned  upwards  at  a  certain  point,  in  an  abrupt  angle, 
towards  the  bank  they  had  quitted,  and  the  marks  of 
increased  speed  became  palpable.  The  prints,  instead  of 
being  leisurely  set  down,  so  as  to  make  impressions  as 
sharp-edged  as  if  they  had  been  carved  or  modelled  in  the 
clay,  were  elongated  by  being  thrown  out  backwards,  and 
the  strides  were  considerably  longer  than  those  in  the 
downward  line.  And,  bearing  direct  on  the  retreating 
footprints  from  the  opposite  bank,  and  also  exhibiting 
signs  of  haste,  I  detected  the  track  of  a  dog.  The  details 
of  the  incident  thus  recorded  in  the  hardened  mud  were 
complete.  The  sheep  had  gone  down  into  the  hollow 


216  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

shortly  after  the  retreat  of  the  waters,  and  while  it  was 
yet  soft;  and  the  dog,  either  acting  upon  his  own  judg- 
ment, or  on  that  of  the  shepherd,  had  driven  them  back. 
A  little  farther  on  I  found  the  prints  of  a  shoed  foot  of 
small  size.  They  passed  onwards  across  the  hollow,  the 
steps  getting  deeper  and  deeper  as  they  went,  until  near 
the  middle,  where  there  were  a  few  irregular  steps,  shorter, 
deeper,  and  more  broken  than  any  of  the  others;  and 
then  the  marks  of  the  small  shoes  altogether  disappeared, 
and  a  small  naked  foot  of  corresponding  size  took  their 
place,  and  formed  a  long  line  to  the  opposite  bank.  In 
this  case,  as  in  the  other,  the  details  of  the  incident  were 
clear.  Some  urchin,  in  venturing  across  when  the  mud 
was  yet  soft  and  deep,  after  wading  nearly  half  the  way 
shod,  had  deemed  it  more  prudent  to  wade  the  rest  of 
it  barefoot  than  to  bemire  his  stockings.  In  each  case 
the  incident  was  recorded  in  peculiar  characters ;  and  to 
read  such  characters  aright,  when  inscribed  upon  the 
rocks,  forms  part  of  the  proper  work  of  the  ichnologist. 
His  key,  so  far  at  least  as  mere  incident  is  concerned,  is 
the  key  of  circumstantial  evidence ;  and  very  curious 
events,  as  I  have  said,  —  events  which  one  would  scarce 
expect  to  find  recorded  in  the  strata  of  ancient  systems, — 
does  it  at  times  serve  to  unlock. 

In  some  remote  and  misty  age,  lost  in  the  deep  obscu- 
rity of  the  unreckoned  eternity  that  hath  passed,  but 
which  we  have  learned  to  designate  as  the  Triassic  period, 
a  strangely  formed  reptile,  unlike  anything  which  now 
exists,  paced  slowly  across  the  ripple-marked  sands  of  a 
lake  or  estuary.1  It  more  resembled  a  frog  or  toad  than 

1  Reptiles  are  known  to  have  existed  from  the  period  of  the  Old  Red 
S:m<lstone,  where  their  tracks  have  lately  been  discovered.  The  reptiles 
of  the  Coal  arc  of  the  Batrachian  type;  the  Permian  reptiles  are  allied  to 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  217 

any  animal  with  which  we  are  now  acquainted;  but  to 
the  batrachian  peculiarities  it  added  certain  crocodilian 
features,  and  in  size  nearly  rivalled  one  of  our  small  High- 
land oxen.  The  prints  it  made  very  much  resembled 
those  of  a  human  hand ;  but,  as  in  the  frog,  the  hinder 
paws  were  fully  thrice  the  size  of  the  fore  ones ;  and  there 
was  a  gigantic  massiveness  in  the  fingers  and  thumb,  which 
those  of  the  human  hand  never  possess.  Onward  the  crea- 
ture went,  slowly  and  deliberately,  on  some  unknown 
errand,  prompted  by  its  instincts;  and  as  the  margin  of 
"  the  sea  or  lake,  lately  deserted  by  the  water,  possessed  the 
necessary  plasticity,  it  retained  every  impression  sharply. 
The  wind  was  blowing  strongly  at  the  time,  and  the 
heavens  were  dark  with  a  gathering  shower.  On  came 
the  rain ;  the  drops  were  heavy  and  large ;  and,  beaten 
aslant  by  the  wind,  they  penetrated  the  sand,  not  perpen- 
dicularly, as  they  would  have  done  had  they  fallen  during 
a  calm,  but  at  a  considerable  angle.  But  such  was  the 
weight  of  the  reptile,  that,  though  the  rain-drops  sank 
deeply  into  the  sand  on  every  side,  they  made  but  com- 
paratively faint  impressions  in  its  footprints,  where  the 
compressive  effect  of  its  tread  rendered  the  resisting  mass 
more  firm.  "We  have  here,  in  a  single  slab,"  says  Dr. 
Buckland,  in  referring,  in  his  address  to  the  Geological 
Society  for  1840,  to  these  very  footprints,  and  their  ad- 
juncts,—  "we  have  here,  in  a  single  slab,  a  combination 
of  proofs  as  to  meteoric,  hydrostatic,  and  locomotive  phe- 
nomena, which  occurred  at  a  time  incalculably  remote,  in 
the  atmosphere,  the  water,  and  the  movements  of  animals, 
from  which  we  infer,  with  the  certainty  of  cumulative 
circumstantial  evidence,  the  direction  of  the  wind,  the 

Batrachians  and  Monitors;  while  the  reptiles  of  the  Trias  are  Labyrintho- 
dont.  — W.  S.  S. 

19 


218  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

depth  and  course  of  the  water,  and  the  quarter  tow:mls 
which  the  animals  were  passing.  The  latter  is  indicated 
by  the  direction  of  the  footsteps  which  form  the  track ; 
the  size  and  curvature  of  the  ripple-marks  on  the  sand, 
now  converted  into  sandstone,  show  the  depth  and  direc- 
tion of  the  current ;  while  the  oblique  impressions  of  the 
rain-drops  register  the  point  from  which  the  wind  was 
blowing  at  or  about  the  time  when  the  animals  were 
passing."1  There  is  another  scarce  less  curious  or  less 
minutely  recorded  incident  inscribed  on  a  slab  of  the 
same  formation,  figured  and  described  by  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison.  It  is  impressed  by  the  footprints  of  some 
betailed  batrachian,  greatly  less  bulky  than  the  other,  that 
went  waddling  along  much  at  its  leisure,  like  the  sheep  in 
the  nursery  rhyme,  "trailing  its  tail  behind  it."  There 
is  a  double  track  of  footprints  on  the  slab,  —  those  of 
the  right  and  left  feet ;  in  the  middle,  between  the  two, 
lies  the  long  groove  formed  by  the  tail,  —  a  groove  con- 
tinuous, but  slightly  zig-zagged,  to  indicate  the  waddle. 
The  creature,  half-way  in  its  course,  lay  down  to  rest,  hav- 
ing apparently  not  much  to  do,  and  its  abdomen  formed 
a  slight  hollow  in  the  sand  beneath.  Again  rising  to  its 
feet,  it  sprawled  a  little,  and  the  hinder  part  of  its  body, 
in  getting  into  motion,  fretted  the  portion  of  the  surface 
that  furnished  what  we  may  term  the  fulcrum  of  the  move- 
ment, into  two  wave-like  curves.  Here,  again,  are  we 
furnished,  from  the  most  remote  antiquity,  with  a  piece 
of  narrative  of  a  kind  which  assuredly  we  could  scarce 
expect  to  find  enduringly  recorded  in  the  rocks.  Various 
reptiles  have  left  curious  passages  of  their  history  of  this 

1  The  Laltyrinthodon  Bttcklandi  (Lloyd),  formerly  believed  to  be  a  Trias- 
sic  reptile,  is  now  ranked  as  belongs  to  the  Permian  fauna.  See  Eam- 
*uy,  Quart.  Jour.  Geol.  Soc.,  Vol.  II.  p.  198.  —  \V.  S.  S. 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  219 

kind  inscribed  on  the  sandstones  of  Dumfriesshire;  and 
as  Sir  William  Jardine,  the  proprietor  of  some  of  the 
quarries,  has  set  himself  to  the  work  of  illustration,  the 
geologist  may  soon  hope  to  be  put  in  possession  of  a  mon- 
ograph at  once  worthy  of  the  subject  and  of  so  distin- 
guished a  naturalist.1  The  footprints  first  observed  by 
Dr.  Duncan  were  chiefly  those  of  tortoises ;  but  there  also 
exist  in  the  rock  numerous  tracks  of  the  huge  batrachians 
of  the  period,  with  traces  of  a  small  animal,  scarce  larger 
than  a  rat;  and  of  a  nameless,  nondescript  creature,  whose 
footprints  might  at  first  glance  almost  be  mistaken  for 
those  of  a  horse,  but  the  marks  of  whose  toes  have  been 
traced,  in  some  of  the  impressions,  outside  the  ring  of 
the  apparent  hoof.2  And  this  is  all  we  yet  know  of  these 
reptilian  Triassic  inhabitants  of  Scotland.  Robinson  Cru- 
soe has  gone  down  to  the  sea-shore,  and  seen,  much  to  his 
astonishment,  the  print  of  a  savage  foot  in  the  sand. 

Accoi'ding  to  an  old,  but  not  very  old,  style  of  nomencla- 
ture, derived  from  mineralogical  character  not  yet  wholly 
obsolete,  the  'two  systems,  Triassic  and  Permian,  used  to 
be  included  under  one  general  head,  as  the  New  Red 
Sandstone,  or  the  Bunter  Sandstone  of  Werner  and  Jame- 
son. And  certainly  the  mere  mineralogist  might  find  it 
no  easy  matter  to  draw  a  line  between  them.  Up  to  a 
certain  point  in  the  ascending  scale  there  occur  on  the 
Continent  strata  of  a  Red  Sandstone,  known  as  the  Lower 
Bunter ;  and  immediately  over  it,  a  Red  Sandstone  known 
as  the  Upper  Bunter.1  They  lie  conformably  to  each 

1  See  Sir  William  Jardine's  work  on  the  "  Ichnology  of  Annandale." 

2  Chdichnus  Titan  and  Giyas  Jardine. — W.  S.  S. 

3  The  Bunter  sandstein  and  Bunter  schiefer ;  of  which  the  Bunter  sand- 
stein  is  now  ranked  as  lowest,  Trias,  and  the  Bunter  schiefer  as  upper, 
Permian.  —  W.  S.  S. 


220  LECTURES    ON    GEOLOGY. 

other,  as  if  they  had  been  deposited  in  immediate  succes- 
sion in  a  still  sea:  there  are  no  traces  of  physical  convul- 
sion; the  earthquake  and  the  tornado  had  slept  at  the 
time :  there  was  no  devastating  inundation  of  molten  fire, 
nor  overwhelming  wave  of  translation  ;  — 

"  It  was  not  in  the  battle ;  no  tempest  gave  the  shock : " 

and  yet  that  undisturbed  horizontal  line  marks  where  one 
creation  ended  and  another  began.  -  It  was  held  at  one 
time  that  there  was  not  a  single  organism,  vegetable  or 
animal,  common  to  the  two  great  divisions  to  which  these 
sandstone  beds  belong ;  but  there  now  seems  to  rest  some 
doubt  on  the  point.  In  an  insulated  district  of  France, 
plants  of  the  Coal  Measures  have  been  found  in  a  deposit 
containing  Belemnites ;  and  it  is  held  that  the  Belemnite 
belongs  exclusively  to  the  great  Secondary  division.  But 
the  specific  standing  of  these  Belemnites  still  remains  to 
be  determined :  it  is  possible  they  may  not  be  Secondary 
forms ;  and  it  has  been  suggested  by  M.  Michelin,  a  dis- 
tinguished .French  geologist,  that  generically  the  Belem- 
nite may  not  be  of  the  premised  importance  in  reference 
to  the  age  of  these  Tarentaise  beds.  "  He  is  inclined,"  we 
find  him  saying,  "  to  consider  it  an  instance  of  the  occur- 
rence of  the  Belemnite  form  in  the  Carboniferous  period, 
rather  than  of  the  continuance  of  the  same  species  of 
plants  through  several  successive  epochs." 

But,  leaving  it  to  the  future  researches  of  geologists  to 
determine  whether  there  be  any,  and,  if  so,  how  many, 
organisms  common  to  the  Secondary  and  Paleozoic  divis- 
ions, a  very  slight  acquaintance  with  fossils  is  sufficient  to 
show  that  between  the  types  of  organic  nature  in  these 
two  groat  divisions  there  exist  differences  and  distinctions 
of  the  broadest  and  most  palpable  kind.  In  passing  up- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  221 

wards  from  the  Triassic  to  the  Permian,  we  seem  to  pass, 
not  merely  from  one  dynasty  to  another,  but,  if  I  may  dare 
employ  such  a  term,  from  one  dispensation  to  another. 
So  broad  are  the  differences,  that  they  affect  whole  classes 
of  the  animal  kingdom.  In  the  class  of  fishes,  for  instance, 
an  entire  change  takes  place  in  the  form  of  the  tail.  There 
are  a  few  ichthyic  families  in  the  present  day,  such  as  the 
sharks  and  sturgeons,  that  have  unequally-lobed  tails,  from 
the  circumstance  that  a  prolongation  of  the  vertebral  col- 
umn runs  into  the  upper  lobe ;  whereas  in  perhaps  nine- 
teen-twentieths  of  all  the  existing  families,  the  vertebral 
column  stops  short,  as  in  the  osseous  fishes  common  at  our 
tables,  a  little  over  the  lobes,  to  form  for  them,  a  medial 
basis,  and  the  lobes  themselves  are  equal.  And  this  equal- 
lobed,  or,  as  it  is  termed,  homocercal  condition,  is  the  pre- 
vailing one,  not  only  in  the  present  time,  but  in  all  the 
Tertiary  and  in  all  the.  Secondary  ages,  up  till  the  close  of 
the  Triassic  system.  And  then,  sudden  as  the  shifting  of 
a  scene,  or  as  one  of  the  abrupt  transitions  of  a  dream,  we 
find,  immediately  on  entering  the  great  Palaeozoic  division, 
an  entire  change.  The  unequal-lobed  or  heterocercaZ  tail 
becomes  not  only  the  prevailing,  but  the  only  form,  save 
in  a  few  exceptional  cases,  as  in  that  of  the  Coccosteus  of 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  where  there  were  no  lobes  at  all, 
or  as  in  that  of  its  contemporary  the  Diplopterus,  where 
the  lobes  strike  out  laterally  from  a  prolongation  of  the 
column.  In  short,  the  equally-lobed  tail  ceases  with  the 
Trias,  to  reappear  no  more,  and  the  unequally-lobed  tail 
takes  its  place.  Similar  changes  manifest  themselves  in 
other  divisions  and  classes  of  the  animal  kingdom.  Waiv- 
ing for  the  present  the  question  raised  by  the  French  geol- 
ogist, M.  Michelin,  in  Britain  at  least  the  Belemnite,  so 
abundant  in  the  Secondary  formations,  and  so  characteris- 

19* 


222  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

tic  of  them,  has  no  place  among  the  formations  of  the 
Palaeozoic  period.  Save,  too,  in  a  few  rare  and  somewhat 
equivocal  species,  the  equally  characteristic  Ammonite  dis- 
appears.1 We  take  leave  also  of  the  scarce  less  character- 
istic Gryphites,  of  the  Trigonia,  Plagiostoma,  and  Perna, 
with  several  other  well-marked  types  of  shell ;  but  we  find 
their  places  amply  occupied  by  types  exclusively  Paleo- 
zoic. The  Orthoceratites,  straight,  conical,  chambered 
shells,  anticipated,  we  see,  the  place  of  the  Belemnites; 
the  Goniatites,  that  of  the  Ammonites  proper ;  the  Beller- 
ophon  and  the  Euomphalus,  unseen  in  any  other  period, 
full  into  the  general  group,  and  add  to  the  peculiarity  of 
its  aspect ;  with  a  whole  array  of  unwonted  forms  among 
the  brachiopoda,  such  as  Spirifers,  Producta,  Atrypa,  and 
Pentamerus,  etc.,  etc.  But  it  was  perhaps  in  the  vegetable 
world  that  the  Paleozoic  ages  most  remarkably  differed 
from  those  of  the  subsequent  periods  of  the  geologist, 
whether  Secondary,  Tertiary,  or  Recent.  We  read  in  the 
older  poets,  of  enchanted  forests ;  but  the  true  enchanted 
forests,  stranger,  in  their  green  luxuriance,  than  poet  ever 
yet  fancied,  and  where  the  botanist,  surrounded  by  irre- 
ducible shapes  that  would  take  no  place  in  his  systems, 
might  well  deem  himself  in  a  wild  dream,  were  the  forests 
of  the  Coal  Measures. 

The  Coal  Measures  of  Scotland  occupy  about  two  thou- 
sand square  miles  of  surface,  and,  though  much  overflown 
by  igneous  rock,  and  occasionally  broken  through  by 
patches  of  Old  Red  Sandstone,  run  diagonally  across  the 
country,  from  sea  to  sea,  in  a  tolerably  well-defined  belt, 
nearly  parallel  to  the  line  of  the  southern  flank  of  the 
Grampians.  Throughout  their  entire  extent  they  owe 

1  These  views  require  much  modification.  See  Sir  C.  Lyell's  "  Supple- 
ments," 1857.  — W.  S.  S. 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  223 

their  scenic  peculiarities  to  the  trap ;  but  where  least  dis- 
turbed, as  in  the  Dalkeith  coal-field,  they  are  of  an  incon- 
spicuous, low-featured  character,  and  chiefly  remarkable 
for  their  rich  fields,  as  to  the  east  of  Edinburgh,  between 
the  Arthur  Seat  group  of  hills  and  the  Garlton  hills  near 
Haddington ;  or  for  their  romantic  dells  and  soft  pastoral 
valleys,  such  as  Dryden  Dell,  or  the  valley  of  Lasswade, 
or,  to  enumerate  two  other  well-known  representative 
localities  in  one  stanza,  borrowed  from  Macneil, 

"  Roslin's  gowany  braes  sae  bonny, 

Crags  and  water,  woods  and  glen; 
Roslin's  banks,  unpeered  by  ony, 
Save  the  Muse's,  Hawthornden." 

The  coal-fields  owe  some  of  their  more  characteristic  fea- 
tures, especially  in  the  sister  kingdom,  to  man.  The  tall 
chimneys,  ever  belching  out  smoke ;  the  thickly-sown  en- 
gine-houses, with  the  ever-recurring  clank  of  the  engines, 
and  the  slow-measured  motion  of  their  outstretched  arms 
seen  far  against  the  sky;  the  involved  fretwork  of  rail- 
ways, connected  with  some  main  arterial  branch,  along 
which  the  traveller  ever  and  anon  marks  the  frequent 
train  sweeping  by,  laden  with  coals  for  the  distant  city ; 
the  long  flat  Hires  of  low  cottages,  the  homes  of  the  poor 
colliers;  and  here  and  there,  where  the  ironstone  bands 
occur,  a  group  of  smelting  furnaces ;  —  all  serve  to  mark 
the  Coal  Measures,  and  to  distinguish  them  from  every 
other  system.  And  such  —  striking  off  the  peculiarities 
of  the  trap,  which  has  no  necessary  connection  with  the 
Carboniferous  system,  but  is  common,  in  some  one  part  of 
the  world  or  another,  to  all  the  systems  —  are  some  of  the 
features,  natural  and  superinduced,  of  this  most  important, 
in  an  economic  point  of  view,  of  all  the  geologic  forma- 


224  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

tions.  They  are,  as  I  have  said,  of  no  very  prominent 
character.  The  poet  Delta  describes,  in  a  fine  stanza,  the 
scenery  around  and  to  the  east  of  Edinburgh.  But  though 
the  area  which  the  landscape  includes  contains  one  of  our 
most  considerable  coal-basins,  —  a  basin  mahy  square  miles 
in  extent,  —  it  does  not  furnish  him  with  a  single  descrip- 
tive reference.  Almost  all  those  bolder  and  more  charac- 
teristic features  of  the  scene  which  his  pencil  exquisitely 
touches  and  relieves,  it  owes  to  the  igneous  rocks. 

"  Traced  in  a  map  the  landscape  lies, 

In  cultured  beauty  stretching  wide; 
There  Pentland's  green  acclivities; 

There  ocean  with  its  azure  tide; 
There  Arthur  Seat,  and,  gleaming  through 

Thy  southern  wing,  Dunedin  blue; 
While  in  the  orient,  Lammer's  daughters, 

A  distant  giant  range  are  seen ; 
North  Berwick  Law,  with  cone  of  green, 

And  Bass  amid  the  waters. " 

The  ancient  scenery  of  the  Coal  Measures  would  be 
greatly  more  difficult  to  trace.  As  we  recede  among  the 
extinct  creations  farther  and  farther  from  the  present  time, 
the  forms  become  more  strange,  and  less  reducible  to 
those  compartments  to  which  we  assign  known  classes  and 
existing  types.  Our  more  solid  principles  of  classification 
desert  us,  and  we  are  content  to  substitute  instead,  remote 
analogies  and  distant  resemblances.  We  say  of  one  family 
of  plants  that  they  somewhat  resemble  club-mosses,  shot 
up  in  bulk  and  height  into  forest  trees;  and  of  another 
family,  that  they  would  be  not  very  unlike  the  horsetails 
of  our  morasses,  did  horsetails  rival  in  size  larches  of  some 
twenty  or  thirty  years'  growth.  In  referring  to  yet  other 
families,  we  can  avail  ourselves —  so  outre  are  their  forms 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  225 

—  of  no  resemblance  at  all:  we  can  simply  figure  and 
describe,  and  draw  our  illustrative  comparisons,  if  we  em- 
ploy such,  rather  from  the  departments  of  art  than  of 
nature.  It  is  possible  that,  were  some  of  our  higher  bot- 
anists—  our  Balfours,  Browns,  and  Grevilles  —  permitted 
to  range  for  a  day  over  the  broad  plains  of  Jupiter,  or 
amid  the  bright  sunshiny  vales  of  Mercury  or  Venus,  even 
they  might  be  but  able  to  tell  us,  on  their  return,  of  gor- 
geous floras,  that  defied  all  their  old  rules  of  classification, 
and  which  could  be  illustrated  from  that  of  our  own 
planet  only  by  distant  resemblances  and  remote  analogies. 
And  assuredly  such  would  be  the  case,  could  they,  through 
the  exercise  of  some  clairvoyant  faculty,  be  enabled  to 
journey  for  millions  and  millions  of  years  into  the  remote 
past,  and  to  spend  a  few  enchanted  hours  amid  the  dense 
and  sombre  thickets  of  a  Carboniferous  forest.  Shall  I 
venture  on  communicating  to  this  audience  \  snatch  of 
personal  history,  illustrative  of  the  mode  in  which  I  myself 
arrived,  many  years  ago,  at  my  earliest  formed  concep- 
tions regarding  the  old  flora  of  the  Coal  Measures  ? 

The  first  perusal  of  "  Gulliver's  Travels  "  forms  an  era  in 
the  life  of  a  boy,  if  the  work  come  in  his  way  at  the  right 
time ;  and  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  secure  my  first  read- 
ing of  it  at  the  mature  age  of  eight  years.  For  weeks, 
months,  years  after,  my  imagination  was  filled  with  the 
little  men  and  little  women,  and  with  at  least  one  scene 
laid  in  the  country  of  the  very  tall  men,  —  the  scene  in 
which  Gulliver,  after  wandering  amid  grass  that  rose 
twenty  feet  over  his  head,  lost  himself  in  a  vast  thicket 
of  barley  forty  feet  high.  I  became  the  owner,  in  fancy, 
of  a  colony  of  little  men ;  I  had  little  men  for  inhabiting 
the  little  houses  which  I  built,  for  tilling  my  apron- 
breadth  of  a  garden,  and  for  sailing  my  little  ship ;  and, 


226  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

coupling  with  the  men  of  Lilliput  the  scene  in  Brobidgnag, 
I  often  set  myself  to  imagine,  when  playing  truant  nil 
alone  on  the  solitary  slopes  or  amid  the  rocky  dells  of 
Driemiorie,  how  the  little  creatures,  who  were  sure  always 
to  accompany  me  on  these  occasions,  would  be  impressed 
by  the  surrounding  vignette-like  scenes  and  mere  pictur- 
esque productions,  exaggerated  on  hill  and  in  hollow,  by 
their  own  minuteness,  into  great  size.  I  have  imagined 
them  threading  their  way  through  dark  and  lofty  forests 
of  bracken  fifty  feet  high,  or  admiring  on  the  hill-side 
some  enormous  club-moss,  that  stretched  out  its  green 
hairy  arms  over  the  soil  for  whole  roods,  or  arrested  at  the 
edge  of  some  dangerous  and  dreary  morass  by  hedges 
of  gigantic  horsetail,  that  bore  atop  their  many-windowed, 
club-like  cones,  twenty  feet  over  the  dank  surface,  and 
that  shot  forth  at  every  joint  their  green  verticillate  leaves 
in  rings  hug*  as  coach-wheels.  And  while  I  thus  thought, 
or  rather  dreamed,  for  my  Lilliputian  companions,  I  be- 
came for  the  time  a  Lilliputian  myself,  —  saw  the  minute 
in  nature  as  if  through  a  magnifying  glass,  —  roamed  in 
fancy  under  ferns  that  had  shot  up  into  trees, —  and  saw 
the  dark  cones  of  the  equisetaceas  stand  up  over  their 
spiky  branches  some  six  yards  or  so  above  head.  But 
these  day-visions  belonged  to  an  early  period  :  dreams 
of  at  least  a  severer,  if  not  more  solid  cast,  dispossessed 
the  little  men  and  women  of  the  place  they  had  occupied ; 
and  I  had  learned  to  think  of  the  wondrous  tale  of  Swift 
as  one  of  the  most  powerful  but  least  genial  of  all  the 
satires  which  the  errors  and  perversions  of  poor  humanity 
have  ever  provoked,  when  in  the  year  1824  I  formed  my 
first  practical  acquaintance  with  the  flora  of  the  Coal 
Measures.  I  was  engaged  as  a  stone-cutter,  a  few  miles 
from  Edinburgh,  in  making  some  additions,  in  the  old 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  227 

English  style,  to  an  ancient  mansion-house  ;  and  the  stone 
in  which  I  wrought,  —  a  curiously  variegated  sandstone, 
derived  from  a  quarry  since  shut  up,  —  was,  I  soon  found, 
exceedingly  rich  in  organic  casts  and  impressions.  They 
were  exclusively  vegetable.  Often  have  I  detected  in  the 
rude  block  placed  before  me,  to  be  fashioned  into  some 
moulded  transom  or  carved  mullion,  fragments  of  a  sculp- 
ture which  I  might  in  vain  attempt  to  rival,  —  the  forked 
stems  of  Lepidodendra,  fretted  into  scales  that,  save  for 
theii!  greater  delicacy  and  beauty,  might  have  reminded 
the  antiquary  of  the  sculptured  corslet  of  scale-armor 
on  the  effigies  of  some  ancient  knight;  the  straight- 
stemmed  Calamite,  fluted  from  joint  to  joint,  like  the 
shaft  of  some  miniature  column  of  the  Grecian  Doric; 
the  Sigillaria,  also  a  fluted  column,  but  of  a  more  mere- 
tricious school  than  that  of  Greece,  for  it  was  richly 
carved  between  the  flutings ;  the  Stigmaria,  fretted  over, 
with  its  eye-lit  holes  curiously  connected  by  delicately- 
waved  lines ;  and  occasionally  the  elaborately  ornate 
Ulodendron,  with  its  rows  of  circular  scars,  that  seemed 
to  have  been  subjected  to  the  lathe  of  an  ornamental 
turner,  and  its  general  surface  fretted  over  with  what 
seemed  to  be  nicely  sculptured  leaves,  such  as  we  some- 
times see  on  a  Corinthian  torus.  It  was  not  easy,  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  cefftury  ago,  when  Sir  Roderick  Mur- 
chison  was  still  an  officer  of  dragoons,  Sir  Charles  Lyell 
prosecuting  the  study  of  English  law,  and  Dr.  Buckland 
still  engaged  with  his  theory  of  the  Flood,  which  he  had 
given  to  the  world  only  the  previous  year,  —  it  was  not 
easy,  I  say,  for  a  working  man  to  have  such  questions 
solved  as  these  fossils  of  the  Coal  Measures  served  to 
raise.  But  they  were,  at  length,  in  some  measure  solved. 
I  was  taught  to  look  to  those  forms  of  the  existing  flora 


228  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

of  our  country  that  most  resembled  the  forms  of  its  flora 
during  the  Carboniferous  period.  And,  strange  to  tell, 
I  found  I  had  just  to  fall  back  on  my  old  juvenile  imag- 
inings, and  to  form  my  first  approximate  conceptions  .of 
the  forests  of  the  Coal  Measures  by  learning  to  look  at 
our  ferns,  club-mosses,  and  equisetaceae,  with  the  eye  of 
some  wandering  traveller  of  Lilliput,  lost  amid  their  entan- 
glements, like  Gulliver  among  those  of  the  fields  of  Brob- 
dignag.  When  sauntering,  after  the  work  of  the  day  was 
over,  along  the  edge  of  some  wood-embosomed  streamlet, 
where  the  horsetail  rose  thick  and  rank  in  the  danker 
hollows,  and  the  fern  shot  out  its  fronds  from  the  drier 
banks,  I  had  to  sink  in  fancy,  as  of  old,  into  a  manikin 
of  a  few  inches,  and  to  see  intertropical  jungles  in  the 
tangled  grasses  and  thickly  interlaced  equisetaceae,  and 
tall  trees  in  the  herbaceous  plants  and  the  shrubs. 

But  many  a  wanting  feature  had  to  be  supplied,  and 
many  an  existing  one  altered.  Amid  forests  of  arbora- 
ceous ferns,  tall  as  our  second-class  trees,  there  stood 
up  gigantic  club-mosses  thicker  than  the  body  of  a  man, 
and  from  sixty  to  eighty  feet  in  height ;  more  than  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  species  of  smaller  ferns,  and  about  one  third 
that  number  of  smaller  species  of  club-mosses,  clothed  the 
opener  country ;  and  along  the  frequent  marshes  and  lakes 
that  covered  vast  tracts  of  its  flat  Surface,  or  the  sluggish 
rivers  that  winded  through  it,  there  flourished  huge 
thickets  of  equisetaceae,  of  from  twelve  to  fourteen  different 
species,  tall,  some  of  them,  as  the  masts  of  pinnaces,  and 
thick  and  impenetrable  as  the  fairy  hedge  that  surrounded 
the  palace  of  the  sleeping  beauty.  But  among  these 
forms  of  the  vegetable  world,  that,  at  least  through  the 
blue  steaming  vapor  of  so  dank  a  land,  seem  but  the 
more  familiar  forms  of  our  lochans  and  hill-sides  many 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  229 

times  magnified,  there  arise  strange  floral  shapes,  among 
which  we  can  recognize  no  existing  type.  The  Uloden- 
dron,  bearing  along  its  carved  trunk,  on  two  of  its  sides, 
rectilinear  strips  of  cones,  like  rows  of  buttons  on  the 
dress  of  a  boy,  and  the  ornately  tatooed  Sigillaria,  lined 
longitudinally,  and  with  its  thickly-planted  vertical  rows 
of  leaves  bristling  from  its  stem  and  larger  boughs,  resem- 
ble no  vegetable  productions  which  the  earth  now  yields. 
The  landscape,  too,  has  its  intertropical  forms,  —  what 
seem  gigantic  Cacti,  with  thickets  of  canes,  and  a  few 
species  of  palms.  And,  where  here  and  there  a  flat  hil- 
lock rises  a  few  yards  over  the  general  level,  we  see 
groups  of  noble  Araucarians  raising  their  green  tops  a 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  over  the  plain.  And  yet,  rich  as 
the  flora  of  the  period  may  seem  in  individuals,  and 
though  it  cumbers  the  soil  with  a  luxuriance  witnessed  in 
our  own  times  only  among  the  minuter  forms,  it  is,  in  all 
save  size  and  bulk,  a  poor  and  low  flora,  after  all.  The 
Pines  and  Araucarians  form  its  only  forest-trees.  We  fail 
to  meet  on  its  plains  a  single  dicotyledonous  plant  on 
which  a  herbivorous  mammal  could  browse.  Its  Lycopo- 
daceas  are  covered  over  with  catkin-like  cones ;  there  are 
cones  on  its  Ulodendra,  cones  on  its  Equisetacea3,  cones 
on  its  Araucarians,  cones  on  its  Pines ;  but  not  a  single 
fruit  have  we  yet  found  good  for  the  use  of  man.  Nor, 
after  the  first  impression  of  novelty  has  passed  away,  is 
there  much  even  to  gratify  the  sight.  The  marvel  of 
ornately-carved  trunks  and  well-balanced  fronds  soon  palls 
on  the  sense ;  and  the  prevalence  of  those  spiky  recti- 
linear forms  in  the  scene  which  Wordsworth  could  regard 
as  such  deformities  in  landscape,  and  which  James  Gra- 
hame  so  deprecates  in  his  "  Georgics,"  "  lies  like  a  load  on 
the  weary  eye."  Nature  labors  in  the  production  of  huge 

20 


230  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

immaturities ;  neither  man,  the  monarch,  nor  his  higher 
subjects,  the  mammals,  have  yet  appeared ;  and  it  is  all 
too  palpable  that  that  garden  has  not  yet  been  planted, 
out  of  the  ground  of  which  there  shall  grow  "  every  tree 
that  is  pleasant  to  the  sight  and  good  for  food." 

Some  of  the  gigantic  forms  of  these  primeval  forests  we 
can  only  vaguely  and  imperfectly  illustrate  by  the  dwarf 
productions  of  our  present  moors  and  morasses ;  and  some 
of  them  we  fail  to  connect,  by  the  links  of  general  resem- 
blance, with  aught  in  the  vegetable  kingdom  that  now 
lives.  Regarded  as  a  whole,  the  flora  of  the  Carboniferous 
age  seems  as  remote  in  its  analogues  from  that  which  now 
exists,  as  remote  in  the  period  during  which  it  flourished. 
There  are,  however,  at  least  two  families  of  plants  which 
bear,  not  a  loose  and  general,  but  a  minute  and  thorough 
resemblance,  to  families  which  also  existed  during  the 
great  Secondary  and  Tertiary  periods,  and  which  still  con- 
tinue to  occupy  a  large  space  among  the  recent  vegetable 
forms.  And  these  are  the  Fern  and  the  Pine  families. 
All  the  species  have  become  extinct  over  and  over  again ; 
but  the  families,  and  many  of  the  genera,  are  ever  repro- 
duced ;  and,  so  far  as  we  know,  this  earth  never  possessed 
a  terrestrial  flora  that  had  not  its  ferns  and  its  pines.  In 
all  the  other  divisions  and  classes  of  the  organic  world 
there  are  also  favorite  families,  such  as  the  Tortoises  among 
reptiles,  the  Cestracions  among  fishes,  the  Nautilus  among 
Cephalopodes,  and  the  Terebratula  among  Brachipods. 
There  are  few  geologic  formations  in  which  either  the 
remains  or  the  footprints  of  Tortoises  have  not  been  de- 
tected ;  there  seems  never  to  have  been  an  ocean  that  had 
not  its  Cestracion ;  the  Nautilus  lived  in  every  age  from 
the  times  of  the  Lower  Silurian  deposits  down  to  the  pres- 
ent day  ;  and,  after  disinterring  specimens  of  fossil  terebra- 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  231 

tula  from  our  Grauwackes,  our  Mountain  Limestones,  our 
Oolites,  and  our  Chalk  Flints,  we  may  cast  the  drag  in  the 
deeper  lochs  of  the  Western  Highlands,  and  bring  up  the 
living  animals,  fast  anchored  by  their  fleshy  cables,  to 
stones  and  shells.  We  can  scarce  glance  over  a  group 
of  fossils  of  the  two  earlier  divisions,  the  Secondary  and 
the  Palaeozoic,  which  we  do  not  find  divisible  into  two 
classes  of  types,  —  the  types  which  still  remain,  and  the 
types  which  have  disappeared.  But  why  the  one  set  of 
forms  should  have  been  so  repeatedly  called  into  being, 
while  the  other'  set  was  suffered  to  become  obsolete,  we 
cannot  so  much  as  surmise.  In  visiting  some  old  family 
library  that  has  received  no  accession  to  its  catalogue  for 
perhaps  more  than  a  century,  one  is  interested  in  marking 
its  more  vivacious  classes  of  works  —  its  Shakspeares, 
Robinson  Crusoes,  and  Pilgrim's  Progresses  —  in  their 
first,  or  at  least,  earlier  editions,  ranged  side  by  side  with 
obsolete,  long-forgotten  volumes,  their  contemporaries, 
with  whose  unfamiliar  titles  we  cannot  connect  a  single 
association.  And  exactly  such  is  the  class  of  facts  with 
which  the  geologist  is  called  on  to  deal.  He  finds  an 
immense  multiplication  of  editions  in  the  case  of  some 
particular  type  of  fish,  plant,  or  shell;  and  in  the  case  of 
other  types,  no  after  instance  of  republication,  or  repub- 
lication  in  merely  a  few  restricted  instances,  and  during 
a  limited  term.  But  while  it  is  always  easy  to  say  why, 
in  the  race  of  editions,  the  one  class  of  writings  should 
have  been  arrested  at  the  starting-post,  and  the  other 
class  should  go  down  to  be  contemporary  with  every  after 
production  of  authorship  until  the  cultivation  of  letters 
shall  have  ceased,  the  geologist  finds  himself  wholly  una- 
ble to  lay  hold  of  any  critical  canon  through  which  to 
determine  why,  in  the  organic  world,  one  class  of  types 


232  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

should  be  so  often  republished,  and  another  so  perempto- 
rily suppressed.  This  far,  however,  we  may  venture  to 
infer,  from  finding  the  two  classes  under  such  a  marked 
diversity  of  dispensation,  that  creation  must  have  been  a 
result,  not  of  the  operation  of  mere  law,  which  would  have 
dealt  after  the  same  fashion  with  both,  but  a  consequence 
of  the  exercise  of  an  elective  will ;  and  that  as  amid  im- 
mense variety  of  effort  and  fertility  of  invention  there 
are  yet  certain  features  of  style,  and  a  certain  recurrence 
of  words  and  phrases,  that  enable  us  to  identify  a  great 
author,  and  to  recognize  a  unity  in  his  works  that  bespeaks 
the  unity  of  the  producing  mind,  so  ought  these  connect- 
ing links  and  common  features  of  widely-separated,  and, 
in  the  main,  dissimilar  creations,  to  teach  us  the  salutary 
lesson  that  the  Author  of  all  is  One,  and  that,  in  the  exer- 
cise of  ."his  unrestricted  sovereignty  and  of  his  infinite  wis- 
dom, he.  chooses  and  rejects  according  to  his  own  good 
pleasure. 

From  the  plants  of  the  swamps  and  forests  of  the  Coal 
Measures  we  pass  on  to  its  fauna,  terrestrial  and  aquatic ; 
—  a  fauna  which,  although  less  picturesque  than  its  won- 
drous flora,  filled  with  all  manner  of  strange  shapes,  seems 
to  have  borne  a  corresponding  character  in  uniting  great 
numeric  development  to  a  development  comparatively  lim- 
ited in  classes  and  orders;  and  with  respect  also  to  the 
extreme  antiqueness  of  many  of  its  types.  The  prevailing 
forms  of  both  flora  and  fauna  belong  equally  to  a  fashion 
that  has  perished  and  passed  away. 

It  was  held,  up  till  a  very  recent  period,  that  there  had 
existed  no  reptiles  during  the  Carboniferous  ages.  Man 
has  been  longer  and  more  perseveringly  engaged  among 
the  Coal  Measures  than  in  any  of  the  other  formations ; 
and,  long  ere  geology  existed  as  a  science,  what  used  to 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  233 

be  termed  its  figured  stones,  —  plants,  shells  and  fishes,  — 
were,  in  consequence,  well  known  to  collectors,  —  a  class 
of  people  sent  into  the  world  to  labor  instinctively  as  pio- 
neers in  the  physical  sciences,  without  knowing  why.  I 
have  seen  prints  of  some  of  these  figured  stones  of  two 
centuries'  standing,  and  have  succeeded  in  recognizing  as 
old  acquaintance  the  Spirifers  and  Ferns  which  had  sat  for 
their  pictures  to  artists  who  knew  nothing  of  either.  Dur- 
ing the  last  sixty  years  there  have  been  many  collections 
made  of  the  Carboniferous  fossils,  and  many  coal-fields 
intelligently  examined,  but  not  a  trace  of  the  reptile  de- 
tected. It  was  not  until  Sir  Charles  LyelTs  second  visit 
to  the  United  States,  five  years  ago,  or  rather  not  until 
the  publication  of  his  second  series  of  travels,  three  years 
after,  that  it  was  known  to  European  geologists  that  the 
coal-fields  of  Pennsylvania,  in  the  United  States,  had,  like 
the  Trias1  of  the  south  of  Scotland  and  of  the  sister  king- 
dom, their  Cheirotherium,  of,  however,  not  only,  as  might 
be  anticipated,  a  different  species,  but  of  even  a  different 
genus,  from  that  of  the  newer  formation,  though  not  less 
decidedly  reptilian  in  its  character.  And  about  the  same 
time,  the  remains  of  a  reptile  since  known  as  the  Arche- 
gosaurus  were  found  in  a  coal-field  in  Rhenish  Bavaria. 
The  Archegosaurus  seems  to  have  been  a  strange-looking 
creature,  —  half  saurian,  half  batrachian,  of  comparatively 
small  size,  with  two  staring  eyes  set  close  together  in  the 
middle  of  a  flat  triangular  skull,  and  furnished  with  limbs 
terminating  in  distinct  toes,  but  so  slim  and  weak,  "  that 
they  could  have  served,"  says  Von  Meyer,  "  only  for  swim- 
ming or  creeping."2  It  is  stated  in  the  "Lake  Superior" 

1  Permians.  —  W.  S.  S. 

2  The  Archegosauri  are  related  to  the  Batrachians  and  Sauroid  fishes, 
according  to  Owen,  "  Siluria,"  new  edition,  p.  363.  —  W.  S.  S. 

20* 


234  LECTUKES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

of  Agassiz^*  that  in  a  shallow  expanse  of  the  river  into 
which  the  lake  falls,  skirted  by  flat  forest-covered  banks, 
and  in  which  a  long  series  of  dreary  mud-flats  are  covered 
by  from  a  few  inches  to  a  few  feet  of  water,  there  occurs  a 
large  gill-furnished  salamander  (Menobranchus),  which  the 
Indians  call  the  "walking  fish,"  and  which  even  to  them  is 
a  great  curiosity.  It  swims  wherever  there  is  sufficient 
depth  of  water,  and  creeps  over  the  mud-flats  where  there 
is  not ;  and,  compared  with  the  swift  and  powerful  Lepi- 
dosteus,  a  reptile-fish  of  the  same  stream,  it  is  a  stupid, 
sluggish,  inert  creature,  safe  only  in  its  uselessness  and  the 
repulsiveness  of  its  appearance.  And,  judging  from  the 
feebleness  of  its  limbs,  and  the  shortness  of  its  ribs,  which 
resemble,  says  Professor  Owen,  those  of  the  half-lunged, 
half-gilled  Proteus,  such  seems  to  have  been  the  character 
of  the  Archegosaurus.  Its  contemporary,  the  American 
Cheiratherium,  ns  shown  by  its  well-defined  footprints, 
must  have  been  a  stronger  limbed  and  larger  reptile,  —  a 
batrachian  heightened  by  a  dash  of  the  crocodile;  and, 
though  probably  often  a  dweller  in  the  water,  the  only 
vestiges  of  it  which  remain  show  that  it  must  have  occa- 
sionally stepped  out  of  its  river  or  lake,  to  take  an  airing 
on  the  banks.  Such  is  nearly  the  sum  total  of  our  knowl- 
edge regarding  the  reptiles  of  the  Carboniferous  period.1 
Like  mammals  in  the  preceding  Secondary  ages,  they 
formed  so  inconspicuous  a  feature  of  the  fauna  of  the 
time,  that  until  very  recently  it  escaped  notice,  and  so 
was  not  recognized  as  a  feature  at  all.  So  far  as  we  yet 

1  Lord  Enniskillcn  possesses  a  fossil  reptile  allied  to  the  Cheriotherium 
from  the  Yorkshire  coal-fields,  the  Parabatrachus  Colei  (Owen).  A  Laby- 
rinthodont  reptile,  Baphatcs planiceps  (Owen),  has  been  found  in  the  Nova 
Scotia  coal-fields.  Also  footmarks  of  sauroid  reptiles  have  been  discovered 
in  Scotland  by  Mr.  Hugh  Milter,  and  in  the  Forest  of  Dean  by  Mr.  C. 
Bromby.  — W.  S.  S. 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  235 

know,  the  great  Secondary  division,  in  which  reptiles,  both 
in  size  and  number,  received  their  fullest  development,  had 
but  few  genera  of  mammals,  —  a  small  pouched  animal, 
and  small  insectivorous  ones :  so  far  as  we  yet  know,  the 
great  Paleozoic  division,  in  which  fishes,  both  in  size  and 
number,  received  their  fullest  development,  had  but  its 
two  genera  of  reptiles,  both  allied,  apparently,  to  the  hum- 
ble batrachian  order.  The  reigning  dynasty  of  the  one 
period,  though  the  mammal  was  present,  was  not  that  of 
the  mammal,  but  of  the  reptile  :  the  reigning  dynasty  of 
the  other  period,  though  the  reptile  was  present,  was  not 
that  of  the  reptile,  but  of  the  fish. 

The  fishes  of  the  Coal  Measures,  in  especial  the  reptile 
fishes,  were  in  truth  very  high  types  of  their  class.  I  have 
already  incidentally  said,  that  with  the  humble  Menobran- 
chus  or  salamander  of  the  great  North  American  lakes 
and  their  tributaries,  there  is  a  true  reptile  fish  associated ; 
—  an  order  of  creatures  of  which,  so  far  as  is  yet  known, 
there  exists  in  the  present  creation  only  a  single  genus. 
It  would  almost  seem  as  if  the  Lepidosteus  had  been 
spared,  amid  the  wreck  of  genera  and  species,  to  serve  us 
as  a  key  by  which  to  unlock  the  marvels  of  the  ichthyol- 
ogy of  those  remote  periods  of  geologic  history  appropri- 
ated to  the  -dynasty  of  the  fish.  This  wonderful  creature 
is  covered  by  scales,  not  of  a  horny  substance,  like  those 
of  the  fish  common  at  our  tables,  but  of  solid  bone,  enam- 
elled, like  the  human  teeth,  on  their  outer  surfaces.  Its 
own  teeth  are  planted  in  double  rows  of  unequal  size,  the 
*lai*ger  being  of  a  reptilian,  the  smaller  of  an  ichthyic  char- 
acter; and  the  front  teeth  of  the  lower  jaw  are  received, 
as  in  the  alligators,  into  sheath-like  cavities  in  the  upper 
jaw,  —  another  reptilian  trait.  Its  vertebral  column,  wholly 
unlike  that  of  other  fishes,  each  of  whose  vertebra  con- 


236  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

sists  of  a  double  cup,  is  formed  of  vertebrae  one  end  of 
which  consists  of  a  cup  and  another  of  a  ball,  —  a  charac- 
teristic of  the  snake ;  it  possesses  true  gilis,  like  all  other 
fishes ;  but  then  it  also  possesses  a  peculiar  form  of  cellular 
air-bladder,  opening  into  the  throat  by  a  glottis,  which, 
according  to  Agassiz,  our  highest  authority,  performs  res- 
piratory functions.  The  Lepidosteus,  says  Sir  Charles 
Lyell,  in  describing,  in  his  second  series  of  travels  in  the 
United  States,  an  individual  which  he  had  seen,  in  sailing 
across  Lake  Solitary,  leap  like  a  trout  or  salmon  over  the 
surface,  in  pursuit  of  its  prey,  —  "  the  Lepidosteus,  whose 
hard  shining  scales  are  so  strong  and  difficult  to  pierce 
that  it  can  scarcely  be  shot,  can  live  longer  out  of  the 
water  than  any  other  fish  of  the  United  States,  having  a 
large  cellular  swimming-bladder,  which  is  said  almost  to 
serve  the  purpose  of  a  real  lung."  Further,  we  find  Agas- 
siz stating,  in  his  "  Lake  Superior,"  that  the  Lepidosteus  is 
one  of  the  swiftest  of  fishes,  darting  like  an  arrow  through 
the  waters,  and  overcoming  with  facility  even  the  rapids 
of  the  Niagara.  He  adds  further,  that  when  at  the  latter 
place,  there  was  a  living  specimen  caught  for  him,  —  the 
first  living  specimen  he  had  ever  seen  ;  and  that  "  to  his 
great  delight,  as  well  as  to  his  utter  astonishment,  he  saw 
this  fish  moving  its  head  upon  its  neck  freely,  right  and 
left,  and  upwards,  as  a  saurian,  and  as  no  other  fish  in  cre- 
ation does."  The  true  native  Yankee  has  a  mode  wholly 
his  own,  and  somewhat  redolent  of  the  revolver  and  the 
bowie-knife,  of  describing  the  peculiar  immunities  and 
high  standing  of  the  Lepidosteus,  or,  as  he  familiarly  terms* 
it,  the  gar-pike.  "  The  gar-pike  is,"  he  says,  "  a  happy 
fellow,  and  beats  all  fish-creation :  he  can  hurt  everything, 
and  nothing  can  hurt  him."  And  such  is  the  living  type 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  237 

of  what  was  the  prevailing  and  dominant  family  of  the 
fauna  of  the  Coal  Measures. 

The  great  size  and  marvellous  abundance  of  those  rep- 
tile fishes  of  the  Carboniferous  period  may  well  excite 
wonder.  One  ironstone  band  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Gilmerton  has  furnished  by  scores,  during  the  last  few 
years,  jaws  of  the  Rhizodus  Hibberti  and  its  congeners,  of 
a  mould  so  gigantic,  that  the  reptile  teeth  which  they 
contain  are  many  times  more  bulky  than  the  teeth  of  the 
largest  crocodiles.  Teeth  and  scales  of  the  same  genus 
are  also  abundant  among  the  .limestones  of  Burdiehouse ; 
—  some  of  the  teeth  much  worn,  as  if  they  had  belonged 
to  very  old  individuals  and  some  of  the  scales,  which 
were  as  largely  imbricated  as  those  of  the  haddock  or 
salmon,  full  five  inches  in  diameter.  The  broken  remains 
of  a  Burdiehouse  specimen  now  in  the  museum  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh  are  supposed  by  Agassiz  to 
have  formed  part  of  one  of  the  largest  of  true  fishes,  —  a 
fish  which  might  be  appropriately  described  in  the  sub- 
lime language  applied  in  Job  to  Leviathan.  If  the  gar- 
pike,  a  fish  from  three  to  four  feet  in  length,  can  make 
itself  so  formidable,  from  its  great  strength,  and  activity, 
and  the  excellence  of  its  armor,  that  even  the  cattle  and 
horses  that  come  to  drink  at  the  water's  side  are  scarce 
safe  from  its  attacks,  what  must  have  been  the  character 
of  a  fish  of  the  same  reptilian  order,  from  thirty  to  forty 
feet  in  length,  furnished  with  teeth  thrice  larger  than 
those  of  the  hugest  alligator,  and  ten  times  larger  than 
those  of  the  bulkiest  Lepidosteus,  and  that  was  covered 
from  snout  to  tail  with  an  impenetrable  mail  of  enamelled 
bone?  "Canst  thou  play  with  Leviathan  as  with  a  bird? 
Canst  thou  fill  his  skin  with  barbed  irons,  or  his  head  with 
fish-spears?  Who  can  open  the  doors  of  his  face?  His 


238  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

teeth  are  terrible  round  about;  his  scales  are  his  pride, 
shut  up  together  as  a  close  seal.  In  his  neck  remaineth 
strength ;  his  heart  is  as  firm  as  a  stone,  yea,  as  hard  as  a 
piece  of  the  nether  millstone.  The  sword  of  him  that 
layeth  at  him  cannot  hold;  the  spear,  the  dart,  nor  the 
habergeon.  He  esteemeth  iron  as  straw,  and  brass  as 
rotten  wood." 

In  the  same  waters  as  the  formidable  and  gigantic 
Holoptychean  genus  there  lived  a  smaller  but  still  very 
formidable  reptile  fish,  now  known  as  the  Megalichthys, 
—  a  fish  whose  body  was  covered  with  enamelled  quad- 
rangular scales,  and  its  head  with  enamelled  plates,  both 
of  so  exquisite  a  polish,  that  they  may  still  be  occasionally 
seen  in  the  shale  of  a  coalpit,  catching  the  rays  of  the 
sun,  and  reflecting  them  across  the  landscape,  as  is  often 
done  by  bits  of  highly-glazed  earthernware  or  glass.  It 
was  accompanied  by  another  and  still  smaller,  but  very 
handsome,  and  scarce  less  highly  enamelled,  genus  of  the 
sauroid  class,  —  the  Diplopterus.  And  if,  after  the  lapse 
of  so  many  ages,  their  armor  still  retains  a  polish  so  high, 
we  may  be  well  assured  that  brightly  must  it  have  glit- 
tered to  the  sun  when  the  creatures  leaped  of  old  into  the 
air,  like  the  Lepidosteus  of  Lake  Solitary,  after  some 
vagrant  ephemera  or  wandering  dragon-fly ;  and  brightly 
must  the  reflected  light  have  flashed  into  the  dark  recesses 
of  the  old  overhanging  forest  that  rose  thick  and  tangled 
over  the  lake  or  river  side.  The  other  ichthyic  contempo- 
raries of  these  fishes  were  very  various  in  size  and  aspect. 
About  half  their  number  belonged  to  the  same  ganoidal 
or  bone-covered  order  as  the  Holoptychius  and  Mega- 
lichthys,  and  the  other  half  to  that  placoidal  order  repre- 
sented in  our  existing  seas  by  the  sharks  and  rays.  The 
lakes,  rivers,  and  estuaries  abounded,  perhaps  exclusively, 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  239 

in  ganoids,  such  as  the  Palceoniseus,  a  small,  handsome, 
well-proportioned  genus,  containing  several  species,  —  the 
Eurynotus,  a  rather  longer  and  deeper  genus,  formed 
somewhat  in  the  proportions  of  the  modern  bream,  —  and 
the  Acanthodes,  an  elongated,  spined,  small-scaled  genus, 
formed  in  the  proportions  of  the  ling  or  conger  eel.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  seas  of  the  period,  abundant  also  in 
ganoids,  were  tenanted  by  numerous  and!  obsolete  families 
of  sharks,  amply  furnished  both  with  razor-like  teeth  in 
their  jaws  for  cutting,  and  millstone-like  teeth  on  their 
palates  for  crushing,  —  furnished,  some  of  them,  with 
barbed  stings,  like  the  sting-rays,  —  and  whose  dorsal  fins 
were  armed  with  elaborately  carved  spines.  The  only 
representative  of  any  of  these  genera  of  marine  placoids 
which  still  exists,  is  the.Cestracion,  or  Port-Jackson  shark, 
a  placoid  of  the  southern  hemisphere. 

We  know  that  over  the  rivers  and  lakes  inhabited  by 
the  ganoidal  fishes  of  this  period  there  fluttered  several 
species  of  insects  mounted  on  gauze  wings,  like  the  Ephe- 
meridae  of  the  present  day.  At  least  one  of  their  number 
must  have  been  of  considerable  size ;  a  single  wing  pre- 
served in  ironstone,  though  not  quite  complete,  is  longer 
than  the  anterior  wing  of  one  of  our  largest  dragon-flies, 
and  about  twice  as  broad;  and,  as  its  longitudinal  nervures 
are  crossed  at  nearly  right  angles  by  transverse  ones,  it 
must  have  resembled,  when  attached  to  the  living  animal, 
a  piece  of  delicate  net-work.  In  the  woods,  and  among 
the  decaying  trunks,  there  harbored  at  the  same  time 
several  species  of  snouted  beetles,  somewhat  akin  to  the 
diamond  beetles  of  the  tropics;  and  with  these,  large, 
many-eyed  scorpions.  The  marshes  abounded  in  minute 
crustaceans,  of,  however,  a  low  order,  that  bore  their  gills 
attached  to  their  feet,  and  breathed  the  more  freely  the 


240  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

more  merrily  they  danced;  and  the  seas  contained  the 
last  of  the  trilobites.  I  have  already  referred  incidentally 
to  the  shells.  The  fresh  waters  contained  various  forms 
of  Unio,  somewhat  similar  to  the  pearl  mussels  of  our 
rivers ;  the  profounder  depths  of  the  sea  had  their  brachi- 
pods, —  Spirifers  and  Producta;  while  molluscs  of  a  higher 
order — Orthoceratites,  some  of  them  of  a  gigantic  size, 
Nautilus,  and  Goriiatite, —  swam  above.  Corals  of  strange 
shapes  were  abundant :  there  were  several  species  of 
Tubilipora,  which  more  resembled  the  organ-pipe  coral 
than  aught  else  that  still  exists;  with  great  numbers  of 
a  horn-shaped  coral,  Turbinolia,  with  its  point  turned 
downwards,  like  that  of  a  Cornucopia,  and  with  an  animal 
somewhat  akin  to  the  sea-anemone,  expanded,  flower-like, 
from  its  upper  end.  With  these,  too,  there  were  grouped 
delicately  branched  corals,  mottled  with  circular  cells ;  and 
minutely  elegant  Fenestrella,  that  seemed  reduced  editions 
of  the  sea-fan.  An  antiquely-formed  sea-urchin,  whose 
spines  were  themselves  roughened  with  minute  spines,  as 
the  more  delicate  branches  of  a  sweet  brier  are  roughened 
with  thorns,  crept  slowly  among  these  zoophytes  by  its 
many  cable-like  tentacula;  while  forests  of  Crinoidea 
waved  in  the  tide,  and  sent  abroad  their  many  arms  from 
the  ledges  overhead.  These  forests  of  Crinoidea  or 
stone-lilies  formed  one  of  the  leading  characteristics  of 
the  sea-bottoms  of  the  period.  We  may  conceive  of  them 
as  thickets  of  flexible-jointed  stems  rooted  to  the  rocks, 
and  with  a  variously-formed  star-fish  fixed  on  the  top  of 
each  stem.  Some  of  the  stems  were  branched,  som-e 
simple ;  in  some  the  petals  or  rays  were  richly  palmated ; 
in  others,  plain  and  star-like ;  in  some,  what  might  be 
deemed  the  calyx  of  the  flower,  but  which  was  in  reality 
the  stomach  of  the  animal,  was  round  and  polished;  in 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  241 

others,  ornately  carved  into  regular  geometrical  figures. 
But,  however  various  in  their  appearances,  they  were  all 
sedentary  star-fishes,  that,  poised  on  their  tall,  cane-like 
stems,  sent  abroad  their  arms  into  the  waters  of  the  old 
Carboniferous  ocean,  in  quest  of  food.  The  minute  joints 
of  the  stem,  perforated  in  the  middle  by  a  circular  passage, 
and  fretted  by  thick-set  rays  radiating  from  the  centre, 
seem  to  have  attracted  notice  in  an  early  age,  and  are 
known  in  legendary  lore  as  the  beads  of  St.  Cuthbert. 
Dr.  Mantell  states  that  he  has  found  quantities  of  these 
perforated  ossicula,  which  had  been  worn  as  ornaments, 
in  tumuli  of  the  ancient  Britons.  And  you  will  remem- 
ber that  in  "Marmion,"  the  nuns  of  St.  Hilda,  who  lived 
in  a  Liassic  country,  rich  in  Ammonites,  had  their  stories 
regarding  the  snakes  which  their  sainted  patroness  had 
changed  into  stone ;  and  that  they  were  curious  to  know, 
in  turn,  from  the  nuns  of  Lendisferne,  who  lived  in  a  Car- 
boniferous district,  rich  in  encrinites,  the  true  story  of  the 
beads  of  St.  Cuthbert. 

-     "  But  fain  St.  Hilda's  nuns  would  learn, 
If  on  a  rock  by  Lendisferne, 
St.  Cuthbert  sits,  and  toils  to  frame 
The  sea-born  beads  that  bear  his  name. 
Such  tales  had  Whitby's  fishers  told, 
And  said  they  might  his  shape  behold, 

And  hear  his  anvil  sound. 

A  deadened  clang,  a  huge  dim  form, 

Seen  but  and  heard,  when  gathering  storm 

And  night  were  closing  round." 

Certainly,  if  he  fabricated  all  the  beads,  he  must  have 
been  one  of  the  busiest  saints  in  the  Calendar.  So  amaz- 
ingly abundant  were  the  lily  encrinites  of  the  Carbon- 
iferous period,  that  there  are  rocks  in  the  neighborhood 

21 


242  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

of  Edinburgh  of  considerable  thickness  and  great  lateral 
extent,  composed  almost  exclusively  of  their  remains. 

The  depth  of  the  Carboniferous .  system  has  been  well 
described  as  enormous.  Including  the  Mountain  Lime- 
stone, which  is  a  marine  deposit  of  the  same  period,  and 
which  must  be  regarded  as  forming  a  member  of  the  Coal 
Measures,  there  are  districts  of  England  in  which,  as  esti- 
mated by  Hantell,  it  has  attained  the  vast  thickness  of 
ten  thousand  feet.  In  our  own  immediate  neighborhood 
it  does  not,  as  estimated  by  a  high  authority,  Mr.  Charles 
Maclaren,  quite  equal  half  that  depth.  Our  Carboniferous 
system,  including  the  Roslyn  and  Calciferous  sandstones, 
he  describes,  in  his  "  Geology  of  Fife  and  the  Lothians," 
as  about  foar  thousand  five  hundred  feet  in  thickness,  —  a 
thickness,  however,  which  more  than  equals  the  height  of 
Ben  Nevis  over  the  level  of  the  sea.  That  coal-basin 
which  extends  along  the  flat,  richly  cultivated  plain  which 
stretches  from  the  south-eastern  flanks  of  Arthur  Seat 
to  the  Garlton  Hills  in  Haddingtonshire,  considerably 
exceeds  three  thousand  feet  in  depth ;  and,  could  it  be 
cleared  out  to  the  bottom  of  the  Calciferous  sandstones, 
and  divested  of  the  hundred  and  seventy  beds  of  which 
it  consists,  as  we  have  seen  the  deep  hollow  of  the  Com- 
pensation Pond  divested  of  its  water,  it  would  form  by 
far  the  profoundest  valley  in  Scotland.  Of  the  beds  by 
which  it  is  occupied,  it  is  estimated  that  about  thirty  are 
coal,  varying  from  several  feet  to  but  a  few  inches  in  thick- 
ness ;  and  we  now  know,  that  though  some  of  the  coal- 
seams  were  formed  of  drifted  plants  and  trees  deposited 
in  the  sandy  bottom  of  some  great  lake  or  inland  sea,  by 
much  the  greater  number  are  underlaced  by  bands  of  an 
altered  vegetable  soil,  thickly  traversed  by  roots;  and 
that,  as  in  the  case  of  many  of  our  larger  mosses,  the 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  243 

plants  which  entered  into  their  composition  must  have 
grown  and  decayed  on  the  spot.  And  of  course,  when 
the  plants  were  growing,  the  stratum  in  which  they  occur, 
though  subsequently  buried  beneath  plummet  sound,  or 
at  least  thousands  of  feet,  must  have  formed  a  portion 
of  the  surface  of  the  country  either  altogether  subaerial,  or, 
if  existing  as  a  swamp,  overlaid  by  a  few  inches  of  water. 
We  have  evidence  of  nearly  the  same  kind  in  the  ripple- 
markings,  which  are  so  abundant  throughout  all  the  shales 
and  sandstones  of  the  Coal  Measures,  from  top  to  bottom, 
and  which  are  never  formed  save  where  the  water  is  shal- 
low. Stratum  after  stratum  in  the  whole,  ten  thousand 
feet  included  in  the  system,  where  it  is  mostly  largely 
developed,  must  have  formed  in  succession  the  surface 
either  of  the  dry  land  or  of  shallow  lakes  or  seas ;  one 
bed  must  have  sunk  ere  the  bed  immediately  over  it  could 
have  been  deposited ;  and  thus,  throughout  an  extended 
series  of  ages,  a  process  must  have  been  taking  place  on 
the  face  of  the  globe  somewhat  analogous  to  that  which 
takes  place  during  a  severe  frost  in  those  deeper  lakes  of 
the  country  that  never  freeze,  and  in  which  the  surface 
stratum,  in  consequence  of  becoming  heavier  as  it  becomes 
colder  than  the  nether  strata,  is  forever  sinking,  and  thus 
making  way  for  other  strata,  that  cease  to  be  the  surface 
in  turn.  This  sinking  process,  though  persistent  in  the 
main,  must  have  been  of  an  intermittent  and  irregular 
kind.  In  some  instances,  forests  seem  to  have  grown  on 
vast  platforms,  that  retained  their  level  unchanged  for 
centuries,  nay,  thousands  of  years  together ;  in  other  cases 
the  submergence  seems  to  have  been  sudden,  and  to  such 
a  depth,  that  the  sea  rushed  in  and  occupied  wide  areas 
where  the  land  had  previously  been,  and  this  to  so  consid- 
erable a  depth,  and  for  so  extended  a  period,  that  the 


244  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

ridges  of  coral  which  formed,  and  the  forests  of  Encrinites 
which  grew,  in  these  suddenly  hollowed  seas,  composed 
thick  beds  of  marine  limestone,  which  we  now  find  inter- 
calated with  coal-seams  and  lacustrine  silts  and  shales. 
There  seem,  too,  to  have  been  occasional  upward  move- 
ments on  a  small  scale.  The  same  area  which  had  been 
occupied  first  by  a  forest,  and  then  by  a  lake  or  sea,  came 
to  be  occupied  by  a  forest  again ;  and,  though  of  course 
mere  deposition  might  have  silted  up  the  lake  or  sea  to 
the  level  of  the  water,  it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  how,  with- 
out positive  upheaval  for  at  least  a  few  feet,  such  surfaces 
at  the  water-level  should  have  become  sufficiently  consol- 
idated for  the  production  of  gigantic  Araucarians  and 
Pines.  But  the  sinking  condition  was  the  general  one ; 
platform  after  platform  disappeared,  as  century  after  cen- 
tury rolled  away,  impressing  upon  them  their  character 
as  they  passed ;  and  so  the  Coal  Measures,  where  deepest 
and  most  extensive,  consist,  from  bottom  to  top,  of  these 
buried  platforms,  ranged  like  the  sheets  of  a  work  in  the 
course  of  printing,  that,  after  being  stamped  by  the  press- 
man, are  then  placed  horizontally  over  one  another  in  a 
pile.  Another  remarkable  circumstance,  which  seems  a 
direct  result  of  the  same  physical  conditions  of  our  planet 
as  those  ever-recurring  subsidences,  is  the  vast  horizontal 
extent  and  persistency  of  these  platforms.  The  Appalla- 
chian  Coal  formation  in  the  United  States  has  been  traced 
by  Professor  Henry  Rogers  over  an  area  considerably 
more  extensive  than  that  of  all  Great  Britain ;  and  yet 
there  are  some  of  its  beds  that  seem  continuous  through- 
out. The  great  Pittsburg  coal-seam  of  this  field  —  a 
seam  wonderfully  uniform  in  its  thickness,  of  from  eight 
to  twelve  feet  —  must  have  once  covered  a  surface  of 
ninety  thousand  square  miles.  And  this  characteristic  of 


LECTUEES  ON  GEOLOGY.  245 

persistency,  united  to  a  great  extent,  in  the  various  plat- 
forms of  the  Coal  Measures,  and  of  ever-recurring  sub- 
sidence and  depression,  which  accumulated  one  surface 
platform  over  another  for  hundreds  and  thousands  of  feet, 
belongs,  I  am  compelled  to  hold,  to  a  condition  of  things 
no  longer  witnessed  on  the  face  of  the  globe.  The  earth 
has  still  its  morasses,  its  deltas,  its  dismal  swamps ;  it  has 
still,  too,  its  sudden  subsidences  of  surface,  by  which  tracts 
of  forest  have  been  laid  under  water;  but  morasses  and 
deltas  cover  only  very  limited  tracts,  and  sudden  sub- 
sidences are  at  once  very  exceptional  and  merely  local 
occurrences.  Subsidence  during  the  Carboniferous  ages, 
though  interrupted  by  occasional  periods  of  rest,  and  occa- 
sional paroxysms  of  upheaval,  seems,  on  the  contrary,  to 
have  been  one  of  the  fixed  and  calculable  processes  of 
nature;  and,  from  apparently  the  same  cause,  persistent 
swamps,  and  accumulations  of  vegetable  matter,  that  equal- 
led continents  in  their  extent,  formed  one  of  the  common 
and  ordinary  features  of  the  time. 

My  subject  is  one  on  which  great  diversity  of  opinion 
may  and  does  prevail.  But,  while  entertaining  a  thorough 
respect  for  the  judgment  and  the  high  scientific  acquire- 
ments of  geologists  who  hold  that  the  earth  existed  at 
this  early  period  in  the  same  physical  conditions  as  it  does 
now,  I  must  persist  in  believing  that  these  conditions 
were  in  one  important  respect  essentially  different ;  I  must 
persist  in  believing  that  our  planet  was  greatly  more  plastic 
and  yielding  than  in  these  later  times ;  and  that  the  mol- 
ten abyss  from  which  all  the  Plutonic  rocks  were  derived, 
—  that  abyss  to  whose  existence  the  earthquakes  of  the 
historic  period  and  the  recent  volcanoes  so  significantly 
testify,  —  was  enveloped  by  a  crust  comparatively  thin. 
Like  the  thin  ice  of  the  earlier  winter  frosts,  that  yields 

21* 


246  LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY. 

under  the  too  adventurous  skater,  it  could  not  support 
great  weights,  —  table-lands  such  as  now  exist,  or  moun- 
tain chains ;  and  hence,  apparently,  the  existence  of  vast 
swampy  plains  nearly  level  with  the  sea,  and  ever-recur- 
ring periods  of  subsidence,  wherever  a  course  of  deposi- 
tion had  overloaded  the  surface.  The  yet  further  fact, 
that  as  we  ascend  into  the  middle  and  earlier  Palaeozoic 
periods,  the  traces  of  land  become  less  and  less  frequent, 
until  at  length  scarce  a  vestige  of  a  terrestrial  plant  or 
animal  occurs  in  entire  formations,  seems  charged  with  a 
corroborative  evidence.  I  shall  not  say  that  in  these 
primeval  periods 

"  A  shoreless  ocean  tumbled  round  the  globe," 

for  the  terrestrial  plants  of  the  Silurians  show  that  land 
existed  in  even  the  earliest  ages  in  which,  so  far  as  the 
geologist  knows,  vitality  was  associated  with  matter ;  but 
it  would  seem  that  only  a  few  insulated  parts  of  the 
enrth's  surface  had  got  their  heads  above  water  at  the 
time.  The  thin  and  partially  consolidated  crust  could  not 
bear  the  load  of  great  continents;  nor  were  the  "moun- 
tains yet  settled,  nor  the  hills  brought  forth."  It  would 
seem  that  not  until  the  Carboniferous  ages  did  there  exist 
a  period  in  which  the  slowly-ripening  planet  could  exhibit 
any  very  considerable  breadth  of  land ;  and  even  then  it 
seems  to  have  been  a  land  consisting  of  immense  flats, 
unvaried,  mayhap,  by  a  single  hill,  in  which  dreary  swamps, 
inhabited  by  doleful  creatures,  spread  out  on  every  hand 
for  hundreds  and  thousands  of  miles,  and  a  gigantic  and 
monstrous  vegetation  formed,  as  I  have  shown,  the  only 
prominent  feature  of  the  scenery.  Burnett  held  that  the 
earth,  previous  to  the  Flood,  was  one  vast  plain,  without 
hill  or  valley,  and  that  Paradise  itself,  like  the  blomen 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  247 

f/arten  of  a  wealthy  Dutch  burgomaster,  was  curiously 
laid  out  upon  a  flat.  We  would  all  greatly  prefer  the 
Paradise  of  Milton : 

"  A  happy  rural  seat  of  various  views, 
Where  lawns  and  level  downs,  whitened  with  flocks 
Grazing  the  tender  herb,  were  interposed 
With  palmy  hillocks  and  irrageous  vales 
Luxuriant;  and  where  murmuring  waters  fell 
Down  the  steep  hills  dispersed,  or  in  blue  lakes 
Embraced  the  fringed  banks,  with  myrtle  crowned." 

It  was  during  the  times  of  the  Coal  Measures  that  Burnett 
would  have  found  his  idea  of  a  perfect  earth  most  nearly 
realized,  in  at  least  general  outline ;  but  even  he  would 
scarce  have  deemed  it  a  paradise.  Its  lands  were  lands  in 
which,  according  to  the  Prophet,  there  "  could  no  man 
have  dwelt,  nor  son  of  man  passed  through."  From  some 
tall  tree-top  the  eye  would  have  wandered,  without  rest- 
ing-place, over  a  wilderness  of  rank,  unwholesome  morass, 
dank  with  a  sombre  vegetation,  that  stretched  on  and 
away  from  the  foreground  to  the  distant  horizon,  and  for 
hundreds  and  hundreds  of  leagues  beyond;  the  woods 
themselves,  tangled,  and  dank,  and  brown,  woulcl,  accord- 
ing to  the  poet,  have  "breathed  a  creeping  horror  o'er  the 
frame;"  the  surface,  even  where  most  consolidated,  would 
have  exhibited  its  frequent  ague-fits  and  earth-waves;  and, 
after  some  mightier  earthquake  had  billowed  the  landscape, 
dashing  together  the  crests  of  tall  trees  and  gigantic 
shrubs,  there  would  be  a  roar,  as  of  many  waters,  heard 
from  the  distant  outskirts  of  the  scene,  and  one  long  wall 
of  breakers  seen  stretching  along  the  line  where  earth  and 
sky  meet,  —  stretching  inwards,  and  travelling  onwards 
with  yet  louder  and  louder  roar,  —  Calamite  and  Uloden- 
dron,  Sigillaria  and  Tree-fern,  disappearing  amid  the  foam, 


248  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

—  until  at  length  all  would  be  submerged,  and  only  here 
and  there  a  few  Araucarian  tops  seen  over  a  sea  without 
visible  shore.  Such  was  the  character,  and  such  were  the 
revolutions,  of  the  land  of  the  Carboniferous  era,  —  a  land 
that  seems  to  have  been  called  into  being  less  for  the  sake 
of  its  own  existence  than  for  that  of  the  existences  of  the 
future. 


LECTURE    SIXTH. 

Remote  Antiquity  of  the  Old  Bed  Sandstone  — Suggestive  of  the  vast  Tracts  of 
Time  with  which  the  Geologist  has  to  deal — Its  great  Depth  and  Extent  in 
Scotland  and  England  —  Peculiarity  of  its  Scenery  —  Keflection  on  first  dis- 
covering the  Outline  of  a  Fragment  of  the  Asterolepis  traced  on  one  of  its 
Rocks  —  Consists  of  Three  Distinct  Formations  —  Their  Vegetable  Organisms 
— The  Caithness  Flagstones,  how  formed  —  The  Fauna  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone—  The  Pterichthys  of  the  Upper  or  Newest  Formation  —  The  Cephalaspis 
of  the  Lower  Formation — The  Middle  Formation  the  most  abundant  in  Or- 
ganic Remains — Destruction  of  Animal  Life  in  the  Formation  sudden  and 
violent — The  Asterolepis  and  Coccosteus  —  The  Silurian  the  Oldest  of  the 
Geologic  Systems  —  That  in  which  Animal  and  Vegetable  Life  had  their  earliest 
beginnings  —  The  Theologians  and  Geologists  on  the  Antiquity  of  the  Globe — 
Extent  of  the  Silurian  System  in  Scotland  —  The  Classic  Scenery  of  the  Conn- 
try  situated  on  it  —  Comparatively  Poor  in  Animal  and  Vegetable  Organisms  — 
The  Uufossiliferous  Primary  Rocks  of  Scotland  —  Its  Highland  Scenery  formed 
of  them  —  Description  of  Glencoe  —  Other  Highland  Scenery  glanced  at  — 
Probable  Depth  of  the  Primary  Stratified  Rocks  of  Scotland  —  How  deposited 
—  Speculations  of  Philosophers  regarding  the  Processes  to  which  the  Earth 
owes  its  present  Form  —  The  Author's  Views  on  the  subject. 

I  INCIDENTALLY  mentioned,  when  describing  the  Oolitic 
productions  of  our  country,  that  the  shrubs  and  trees  of 
this  Secondary  period  grew,  on  what  is  now  the  east  coast 
of  Sutherland,  in  a  soil  which  rested  over  rocks  of  Old 
Red  Sandstone,  and  was  composed  mainly,  like  that  of  the 
county  of  Caithness  in  the  present  day,  of  the  broken  de- 
bris of  this  ancient  system.  We  detect  fragments  of  the 
Old  Red  flagstones  still  fast  jammed  among  the  petrified 
roots  of  old  Oolitic  trees ;  we  find  their  water-rolled  peb- 
bles existing  as  a  breccia,  mixed  up  with  the  bones  of  huge 
Oolitic  reptiles  and  the  shells  of  extinct  Oolitic  molluscs ; 


250  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

we  even  find  some  of  its  rounded  masses  incrusted  over 
with  the  corals  of  the  Oolite :  the  masses  had  existed  in 
that  remote  age  of  the  world  as  the  same  gray  indurated 
blocks  of  stone  that  we  find  them  now;  and  busy  Mad^ 
reporites,  —  Isastraea  and  Thamnastraea,  —  whose  species 
have  long  since  perished,  built  up  their  stony  cells  on  the 
solid  foundations  which  the  masses  furnished.  Nay,  within 
the  close  compressed  folds  of  these  flagstones  lay  their 
many  various  fossils,  —  glittering  scale,  and  sharp  spine, 
and  cerebral  buckler,  —  in  exactly  the  same  state  of  keep- 
ing as  now ;  and  had  there  been  a  geologist  to  take  ham- 
mer in  hand  in  that  Oolitic  period,  when  the  spikes  of  the 
Pinites  Eiggensis  were  green  upon  the  living  tree,  and  the 
Equisetum  columnare  waved  its  tall  head  to 'the  breeze, 
he  would  have  found  in  these  stones  the  organisms  of  a 
time  that  would  have  seemed  as  remote  then  as  it  does  in 
the  present  late  age  of  the  world.  We  may  well  apply  to 
this  incalculably  ancient  Old  Red  system  what  Words- 
worth says  of  his  old  Cumberland  beggar — - 

"  Whom  from  his  childhood  had  he  known,  that  then 
He  was  so  old,  he  seemed  not  older  now." 

This  glimpse,  through  the  medium  of  the  high  antiquity 
of  the  Oolite,  of  an  antiquity  vastly  higher  still,  —  that  of 
the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  —  may  well  impress  us  with  the 
enormous  extent  of  those  tracts  in  time  with  which  the 
geological  historian  is  called  on  to  deal.  There  are  some 
of  the  lesser  planets  that  seem  to  the  naked  eye  quite  as 
distant  as  many  of  those  fixed  stars  whose  parallax  the 
astronomer  has  failed  to  ascertain ;  but  when  they  come 
into  a  state  of  juxtaposition,  and  the  moveless  star  is  seen 
dimly  through  the  atmosphere  of  the  moving  planet,  we 
are  taught  how  enormous  must  be  those  tracts  of  space 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  2ol 

which  intervene  between  them,  and  keep  them  apart. 
And  it  is  thus  with  the  periods  of  the  geologist.  Even 
the  comparatively  near  are  so  distant,  that  the  remote 
seem  scarce  more  so  ;  but  the  dead  and  stony  antiquity  of 
one  system,  seen  as  if  through  the  living  nature  of  another, 
enables  us,  in  at  least  some  degree,  to  appreciate  the  vast- 
ness  of  those  cycles  by  which  they  were  separated.  It  is 
farther  interesting,  too,  thus  to  find  one  antiquity  curiously 
inlaid,  as  it  were,  in  another.  We  feel  as  if,  amid  the  an- 
cient relics  of  a  Pompeii  or  a  Herculaneum,  we  had  stum- 
bled on  the  cabinet  of  some  Roman  antiquary,  filled  with 
bronze  and  granite  memorials  of  the  first  Pharaohs,  or  of 
the  o1',!  hunter  king  who  founded  Nineveh;  —  things  that 
in  times  which  we  now  deem,  ancient  had  been  treasured 
up  as  already  grown  venerably  old. 

The  Old  Red  Sandstone  underlies  the  Coal  Measures, 
and  is,  in  Scotland  at  least,  still  more  largely  developed 
than  these,  both  in  depth  and  lateral  extent.  In  Caithness 
and  Orkney,  one  of  the  three  great  formations  of  which  it 
consists  has  attained  to  a  thickness  that  equals  the  height 
of  our  highest  hills  over  the  sea.1  The  depth  of  the  entire 
system  in  England  has  been  estimated  by  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison  at  ten  thousand  feet ;  and  as  these  ten  thousand 
feet  include  three  formations  so  distinct  in  their  groups  of 
animal  life  that  not  a  species  of  fish  has  been  found  com- 
mon to  both  higher  and  lower,  it  must  represent  in  the 
history  of  the  globe  an  enormously  protracted  period  of 
time. 

The  scenery  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  we  find  much 
affected  to  the  south  of  the  Grampians,  like  that  of  the 
Coal  Measures,  by  the  presence  of  the  trap  rocks ;  but  in 

1  The  Caithness  flagstones  and  their  ichthyolites  constitute,  according 
to  Sir  R.  Murchison,  the  central  portion  of  the  Old  Red  group.  —  W.  S.  S. 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

the  north,  where  there  is  no  trap,  it  bears  a  character 
decidedly  its  own.  It  is  remarkable  for  rectilinear  ridges, 
elongated  for  miles,  that,  when  they  occur  in  semi-Highland 
districts,  where  the  primary  rocks  have  been  heaved  into 
wave-like  hills,  or  ascend  into  boldly-contoured  mountains, 
constitute  a  feature  noticeable  for  the  contrast  which  it 
forms  to  all  the  other  features  of  the  scene.  In  approach- 
ing the  eastern  coast  of  Caithness  from  the  south,  the 
voyager  first  sees  a  mountain  country,  —  the  land  piled  up 
stern  and  high,  —  the  undulations  bold  and  abrupt.  He  is 
looking  on  the  Highlands  of  Sutherlandshii'e.  All  at  once, 
however,  the  aspect  of  the  landscape  changes;  —  the  bro- 
ken and  wavy  line  suddenly  descends  to  a  comparatively 
low  level,  and,  Avholly  altering  its  character,  stretches  away 
to  the  north,  straight  as  a  tightened  cord,  or  as  if  described 
by  a  ruler.  Caithness,  thus  seen  in  profile,  reminds  one  of 
a  long,  thin  proboscis,  or  mesmerized  arm,  stretched  stifliy 
out  from  the  Highlands  to  the  distant  Orkneys.  In  sailing 
upwards  along  the  Moray  Frith,  the  line  which  defines 
seawards  the  plain  of  Easter  Ross,  from  the  Hill  of  Nigg 
to  the  low  rocky  promontory  of  Tarbat,  topped  by  its 
lighthouse,  presents  nearly  the  same  rectilinear  character. 
Another  long  straight  line  which  meets  the  eye  on  enter- 
ing the  bay  of  Cromarty,  stretches  westwards  from  the  hill 
of  granitic  gneiss  immediately  over  the  town,  and  runs  for 
many  miles  into  the  interior,  along  the  bleak  ridge  of  the 
Black  Isle.  Yet  another  rectilinear  line  may  be  seen  run- 
ning on  the  south  side  of  the  Moray  Frith,  from  beyond 
the  Moor  of  Culloden,  which  it  includes,  to  the  eastern 
end  of  Loch  Ness.  And  in  all  these  instances  the  rectili- 
near ridges  are  composed  of  Old  Red  Sandstone.  On 
some  localities  on  the  seaboard  of  the  country,  the  system 
is  much  traversed  by  friths  and  bays,  and  what  in  Caith- 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  253 

ness  and  Orkney  are  termed  goes,  —  narrow  inlets  in  the 
line  of  faults,  along  which  the  waves  find  straight  passage 
far  into  the  interior.  From  the  Hill  of  Nigg,  the  centre  of 
an  Old  Red  Sandstone  district,  the  eye  at  once  commands 
three  noble  friths,  all  scooped  out  of  the  deposit,  —  the 
Frith  of  Crornarty,  the  Dornoch  Frith,  and  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  Moray  Frith.  It  commands,  too,  what  is 
scarce  less  a  feature  of  the  Old  Red  system,  —  the  rich 
corn-bearing  plains  of  Moray  and  of  Easter  Ross ;  and  from 
the  union  which  the  prospect  exhibits  of  two  elements  dis- 
sociated elsewhere  in  the  country,  —  the  rich  softness  of  a 
Lowland  scene,  with  numerous  arms  of  the  sea,  character- 
istic elsewhere,  as  on  the  western  coast,  of  a  Highland  one, 
—  it  forms  a  landscape  unique  among  the  landscapes  of 
Scotland.  But  perhaps  the  most  striking  scenic  peculiari- 
ties of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  are  to  be  found  in  its  rock- 
pieces.  The  Old  Man  of  Hoy,  with  its  mural  rampart  of 
precipices,  not  unfurnished  with  turret  and  tower,  and  wide 
yawning  portals,  and  that  rise  a  thousand  feet  Over  the 
waves ;  the  tall  stacks  of  Cannisbay,  ornately  Gothic  in 
their  style  of  ornament,  with  the  dizzy  chasms  of  the 
neighboring  headland,  in  which  the  tides  of  the  Pentland 
Frith  forever  eddy  and  boil,  and  the  surf  forever  roars; 
and  the  strangely  fractured  precipices  of  Holbum  Head, 
where,  through  dark  crevice  and  giddy  chasm,  the  gleam 
of  the  sun  may  be  seen  reflected  far  below  on  the  green 
depths  of  the  sea,  and,  venerable  and  gray,  like  some  vast 
cathedral,  a  dissevered  fragment  of  the  coast  descried  rising 
beyond,  —  are  all  rock-scenes  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone. 
When  I  last  stood  on  the  heights  of  Holburn,  there  was  a 
heavy  surf  toiling  far  below  along  the  base  of  the  over- 
hanging wall  of  cliff  which  lines  the  coast;  and  deep  under 
my  feet  I  could  hear  a  muffled  roaring  amid  the  long,  cor- 

22 


254  .LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

ridor-like  caves  into  which  the  headland  is  hollowed,  and 
which,  opening  to  the  light  and  air  far  inland,  by  narrow 
vents  and  chasms,  send  up  at  such  seasons,  high  over  the 
blighted  sward,  clouds  of  impalpable  spray,  that  resemble 
the  smoke  of  great  chimneys.  As  I  peered  into  one  of 
these  profound  gulfs,  and  dimly  marked,  hundreds  of  feet 
below,  the  upward  dash  of  the  foam,  gray  in  the  gloom ; 
as  I  looked,  and  experienced,  with  the  gaze,  that  mingled 
emotion  natural  amid  such  scenes  which  Burke  so  well 
analyzes  as  a  consciousness  of  great  expansiveness  and 
dimension,  associated  with  a  sense  of  danger,  —  my  eye 
caught,  on  the  verge  of  the  precipice,  the  outline  of  part 
of  an  old  reptile  fish  traced  on  the  rock.  It  was  the  cra- 
nial buckler  of  one  of  the  hugest  ganoids  of  the  Old  Red 
Sandstone,  —  the  Asterolepis.  And  there  it  lay,  as  it  had 
been  deposited,  far  back  in  the  bypast  eternity,  at  the  bot- 
tom of  a  muddy  sea.  But  the  mud  existed  now  as  a  dense 
gray  rock,  hard  as  iron  ;  and  what  had  been  the  bottom  of 
a  Palaeozoic  sea  had  become  the  edge  of  a  dizzy  precipice, 
elevated  more  than  a  hundred  yards  over  the  surf.  The 
world  must  have  been  a  very  different  world,  I  said,  when 
that  creature  lived,  from  what  it  is  now.  There  could  have 
been  no  such  precipices  then.  A  few  flat  islands  comprised, 
in  all  probability,  the  whole  dry  land  of  the  globe ;  and 
that  emotion  of  which  I  have  just  been  conscious,  is  it  not 
something  new  in  creation  also?  The  deep  gloom  of  these 
perilous  gulfs,  these  incessant  roarings,  these  dizzy  preci- 
pices, the  sublime  roll  of  these  huge  waves,  —  are  they  not 
associated  in  my  mind  with  a  certain  dim  idea  of  danger, 
—  a  feeling  of  incipient  terror,  which,  in  all  God's  creation, 
man,  and  man  only,  is  organized  to  experience  ?  Is  it  not 
an  emotion  which  neither  the  inferior  animals  on  the  one 
hand,  nor  the  higher  spiritual  existences  on  the  other,  can 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  255 

in  the  least  feel,  —  an  emotion  dependent  on  the  union  of 
a  living  soul  with  a  fragile  body  of  clay,  easily  broken  ? 

The  Old  Red  Sandstone  consists,  as  I  have  said,  of  three 
great  formations,  furnished  each,  in  Scotland  at  least,  with 
its  peculiar  group  of  fossils.  In  the  upper  division  —  that 
which  rests  immediately  under  the  Carboniferous  system 
—  a  few  straggling  plants  of  the  Coal  Measures  have  been 
occasionally  found ;  but,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  plant  peculiar 
to  itself.  In  the  middle  (loicer)  division  we  find  traces  of 
a  peculiar  but  very  meagre  flora.  I  detected  about  ten 
years  ago,  among  the  gray  micaceous  sandstones  of  For- 
farshire,  a  fucoid  furnished  with  a  thick,  squat  stem,  that 
branches  into  numerous  divergent  leaflets  or  fronds  of  a 
slim,  grass-like  form,  and  which,  as  a  whole,  somewhat 
resembles  the  scourge  of  cords  attached  to  a  handle  with 
which  a  boy  whips  his  top.  And  Professor  Fleming  de- 
scribes a  still  more  remarkable  vegetable  organism  of  the 
same  formation,  which,  to  employ  his  own  well-selected 
words,  "  occurs  in  the  form  of  circular  flat  patches,  com- 
posed each  of  numerous  smaller  contiguous  circular  pieces, 
altogether  not  unlike  what  might  be  expected  to  result 
from  a  compressed  berry,  such  as  the  bramble  or  rasp." l 
In  the  lowest  (middle)  division  of  the  Old  Red  traces  of 
land  plants  become  very  rare.  Many  years  ago,  at  Crorn- 
arty,  I  detected,  in  one  of  its  oldest  fossiliferous  beds,  a 
fragment  of  a  cone-bearing  tree,  remarkable  as  being  the 
oldest  piece  of  wood  ever  found,  that,  when  subjected  to 
the  microscope,  exhibits  the  true  ligneous  structure ;  and 
I  possess  a  small  specimen  from  Skaill,  in  the  mainland  of 
Orkney,  also  detected  in  one  of  the  lower  beds,  which 

1  Parka  decipiens.  See  "  Testimony  of  the  Rocks,"  latest  edition.  For 
notice  of  a  Lepidodendron  occurring  in  the  Forfarshire  sandstone,  see  like, 
wise  "  Testimony  of  the  Rocks,"  page  445—7.  —  L.  M. 


256  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

formed,  apparently,  a  portion  of  some  nameless  fern  ;  but 
the  other  vegetable  remains  of  the  lower  (middle)  division, 
though  sufficiently  abundant  in  some  localities  to  give  a 
fissile  character  to  the  rock  in  which  they  occur,  are,  with 
one  doubtful  exception,  all  marine.  They  were  the  weeds 
of  a  widely  extended  sea,  in  which  land  was  at  once  very 
unfrequent  and  of  very  limited  extent.  In  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Thurso  my  attention  has  been  attracted  for  sev- 
eral years  past  by  a  curious  appearance  among  the  flag- 
stones of  the  district,  —  there  enormously  developed,  — 
which  I  am  disposed  to  regard  as  indications  of  the  exist- 
ence of  vast  mud  flats  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  that 
occasionally  showed  their  surfaces  above  water  for  perhaps 
weeks  -and  months  at  a  time,  but  which  were,  in  every 
instance,  submerged  ere  they  acquired  coverings  of  terres- 
trial vegetation.  The  flagstones,  now  known  very  exten- 
sively over  Europe  as  the  Caithness  flag  of  commerce, 
must  have  been  deposited  at  the  bottom  of  a  shallow  sea, 
in  the  form  of  beds  of  arenaceous  mud,  largely  charged 
with  organic  matter.  They  abound  in  minute  ripple- 
markings,  which  could  have  been  formed  only  a  few  feet, 
or  at  most  a  few  fathoms,  under  the  surface ;  and  between 
these  rippled  bands,  for  a  series  of  beds  together,  there 
occur  bands  which  had  been  evidently  subjected  to  a  dry- 
ing process,  so  that,  as  happens  with  the  bottom  of  a 
muddy  pool  laid  dry  during  the  summer  droughts,  they 
cracked  into  irregularly  polygonal  divisions ;  and  as,  when 
again  submerged,  a  sudden  deposition  filled  up  the  cracks, 
we  can  still  trace  these  marks  of  desiccation  as  distinctly 
in  the  stone  as  if  they  had  been  made  by  the  sun  of  the 
previous  week.  Hall,  of  Leicester,  spoke,  in  one  of  his 
illustrations,  of  "a  continent  of  mud;"  and  it  would  seem 
that  in  the  earlier  ages  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  conti- 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  257 

nents  of  mud  were  not  mere  figures  of  speech,  but  that, 
over  dark-hued  and  shallow  seas,  mud-banks  of  vast  extent 
occasionally  raised  their  flat  dingy  backs,  and  remained 
hardening  in  the  hot  sun  until  their  oozy  surfaces  had 
cracked  and  warped,  and  become  hard  as  the  sun-baked 
brick  of  eastern  countries ;  and  that  then,  ere  the  seeds 
of  terrestrial  plants,  floated  from  some  distant  island,  or 
wafted  in  the  air,  had  found  time  to  strike  root  into  the 
crevices  of  the  soil,  some  of  the  frequent  earth-tremors 
of  the  age  shook  the  flat"  expanse  under  the  water  out  of 
which  it  had  arisen,  and  the  waves  rippled  over  it  as 
before.  The  features  of  a  scene  so  tame  and  unattractive 
—  features  which  none  of  the  poets,  save  perhaps  the 
truthful  Crabbe,  would  have  ventured  to  portray  —  will 
not  strike  you  as  very  worthy  of  preservation.  There  is 
certainly  not  much  to  excite  or  gratify  the  fancy  in  a  scene 
of  wide  yet  shallow  seas,  here  and  there  darkened  by  for- 
ests of  algje,  and  here  and  there  cumbered  by  archipelagos 
of  flat,  verdureless  islands  of  mud  that  harden  in  the  sun ; 
but,  regarded  as  embryo  and  rudimentary  land,  even  these 
mud-banks  may  be  found  to  possess  their  modicum  of 
interest.  And  we  know  that  in  the  .shallows  of  that 
muddy  sea,  the  Creator  wrought  with  all  his  wonted  wis- 
dom and  inexhaustible  fertility  of  resource,  in  the  produc- 
tion of  a  dynasty  of  fishes  of  very  extraordinary  form,  but 
high  type,  and  which  manifested  exquisite  faculties  of 
adaptation  to  the  circumstances  in  which  they  were  placed. 
In  glancing  at  the  fauna  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  let 
us  imagine  three  great  platforms  from  which  the  sea  has 
just  retired,  leaving  them  strewn  over 'with  its  spoils, — 
chiefly  fishes.  These  platforms  represent  the  three  great 
periods  of  the  system ;  and  in  each  do  we  find  the  group 
specifically,  and  in  several  instances  genetically,  distinct. 

22* 


258  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

Iii  the  upper  or  newer  platform  —  that  immediately  under 
the  Coal  Measures  —  there  occur  several  species  of  Holop- 
tychius,  all  of  them  of  smaller  dimensions  than  the  giant 
of  the  Carboniferous  system,  but,  in  proportion  to  their 
bulk  and  size,  even  more  strongly  armed.  With  the  Ho- 
loptychius  there  was  associated  a  fish  of  the  same  Cela- 
canth  family,  the  Bathriolepis,  and  several  curious  fishes 
of  what  is  known  as  the  Dipterian  family,  such  as  the 
Stagonolepis1  and  Glyptolepis.  It  contains  also  at  least 
three  species  of  Pterichthys.  One  of  these,  the  Pterich- 
thys  major,  which  occurs  in  the  upper  sandstones  of 
Moray,  is  of  greater  size  than  any  of  the  others  its  con- 
temporaries, or  than  any  of  the  older  species ;  as  if,  in  at 
least  point  of  bulk,  the  creature  received  its  fullest  devel- 
opment just  when  on  the  eve  of  passing  away.2  This 
strange  Pterichthyan  genus  first  appears  at  the  base  of  the 
Old  Red  Sandstone,  and  disappears  with  its  upper  beds. 
It  is  peculiarly  and  characteristically  the  distinctive  organ- 
ism of  the  system,  for  in  no  other  system  does  it  occur ; 
and  it  has  a  yet  further  claim  on  our  notice  here,  from  the 
extreme  singularity  of  its  construction.  "It  is  impossi- 
ble," says  Agassiz,  in  his  great  work  on  fossil  fishes,  "  it 
is  impossible  to  find  anything  more  eccentric  in  the  whole 

1  The  Stagonolepis  is  now  under  examination  as  to  whether  it  is  to  be 
ranked  as  fish  or  reptile.     Sir  R.  Murchison  mentions  this  in  his  last 
address  to  the  Leeds  British  Association,  as  still  undetermined.  —  L.  M. 

2  Associated  with  this  large  Pterichthys  are  now  found  not  only  the 
Telerpcton  Elginense,  a  small  tortoise,  but  footprints  of  larger  reptiles, 
some  only  of  greater  size  than  the  Tclcrpeton,  others  considered  to  ap- 
proach more  nearly  in  bulk  and  conformation  to  some  of  those  of  the 
succeeding  eras.    When  I  lately  visited  the  Museum  at  Elgin,  I  was  grat- 
ified by  seeing  sandstone  slabs  bearing  the  traces  of  each  of  these ;  but  I 
was  told  that  the  best  specimens  had  been  sent  to  London  for  examination. 
It  is  probable  that  they  will  have  been  lawfully  named  and  surnamed  by 
the  iHimnls  ere  the  next  edition  of  this  work  is  ready  for  the  press.  —  L.  AL 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  259 

creation  than  this  genus.  ^  The  same  astonishment  which 
Cuvier  felt  on  examining  for  the  first  time  the  Plesio- 
sauri,  I  myself  experienced  when  Mr.  Hugh  Miller,  the 
original  discoverer  of  these  fossils,  showed  me  the  speci- 
mens which  he  had  collected  from  the  Old  Red  Sandstone 
of  Cromarty."  And  we  find  Humboldt  referring,  in  his 
"Cosmos,"  to  this  strange  Pterichthyan  genus  in  nearly 
the  same  terms.  This,  I  suspect,  is  no  place  for  strict  ana- 
tomical demonstration ;  and  so,  instead  of  elaborately 
describing  the  Pterichthys,  I  shall  merely  attempt  sketch- 
ing its  general  outlines  by  the  aid  of  a  few  simple  illus- 
trations. When,  in  laying  open  the  rock  in  which  it  lies, 
the  under  part  is  presented,  as  usually  happens,  we  are 
struck  with  its  resemblance  to  a  human  figure,  with  the 
arms  expanded,  as  in  the  act  of  swimming,  and  the  legs 
transformed,  as  in  the  ordinary  figures  of  the  mermaid, 
into  a  tapering  tail.  On  further  examination,  we  ascertain 
that  the  creature  was  cased  in  a  complete  armature  of 
solid  bone,  but  that  the  armor  was  of  different  construc- 
tion over  the  different  parts.  The  head  was  covered  by  a 
strong  helmet,  perforated  in  front  by  two  circular  holes, 
through  which  the  eyes  looked  out.  The  chest  and  back 
were  protected  by  a  curiously  constructed  cuirass,  formed 
of  plates ;  and  the  tail  sheathed  in  a  flexible  mail  of  osse- 
ous scales.  The  arms,  which  were  also  covered  with 
plates,  were  articulated  rather  to  the  lower  part  of  the 
head  than  to  the  shoulders;  and  this  by  what  at  first 
appears  to  be  simply  a  ball-and-socket  joint,  like  that  of 
the  human  thigh,  but  which,  on  further  examination,  proves 
to  be  of  a  more  complex  character,  as  we  find  a  pin-like 
protuberance  from  the  socket  finding,  in  turn,  a  socket  in 
the  ball.  The  abdomen  of  the  creature  was  flat ;  the  dor- 
sal portions  strongly  arched ;  and  not  in  our  Gothic  roofs, 


260  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

constructed  on  strictly  mathematical  principles,  do  we 
discover  more  admirable  contrivances  for  combining  in  the 
greatest  degree  lightness  with  strength,  than  in  the  arch 
of  osseous  plates  which  protected  the  Pterichthys.  Nay, 
we  find  in  it  the  two  leading  peculiarities  of  the  Gothic 
roof  anticipated,  —  the  contrivance  of  a  series  of  ribs  that 
radiate  from  certain  centres,  and  the  contrivance  of  the 
groin.  The  helmet  was  united  to  the  cuirass  by  a  curious 
and  yet  very  simple  joining,  that  united  the  principle  of 
the  dovetail  of  the  carpenter  to  that  of  the  keystone  of 
the  architect.  Farther,  the  creature,  with  its  inflexible 
cuirass  and  its  flexible  tail,  and  with  its  two  arms,  that 
combined  the  broad  blade  of  the  paddle  with  the  sharp 
point  of  the  spear,  might  be  regarded,  when  in  motion, 
as  a  little  subaqueous  boat,  mounted  on  two  oars  and  a 
scull.  And  such  was  the  Pterichthys,  —  the  characteristic 
organism  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone.  I  may  remark,  in 
connection  with  this  fish,  —  a  remark,  however,  which 
bears  equally  on  all  its  ganoidal  contemporaries,  —  that 
the  development  of  its  dermal  or  skin-skeleton,. compared 
with  that  of  its  internal  one,  was  singularly  great.  In  the 
present  creation,  with  but  a  few  exceptions,  such  as  the 
Pangolin  and  Armadilla  among  quadrupeds,  the  crocodiles 
and  tortoises  among  reptiles,  and  the  Lepidosteus  and 
Polyopterus  among  fishes,  the  dermal  skeleton  is  but  very 
slenderly  represented.  In  our  own  species,  for  instance, 
it  is  represented  by  but  the  teeth,  the  hair,  and  the  nails ; 
and  were  there  no  other  portions  of  us  to  survive  in  the 
fossil  state,  each  of  the  male  animals  among  us  would  be 
represented  by  but  ten  toe  and  ten  finger  nails,  one  set  of 
teeth,  a  periwig,  and  a  pair  of  whiskers.  But  so  complete, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  the  development  of  the  dermal 
skeleton  among  the  fishes  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  that, 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  261 

though  in  many  instances  no  other  parts  of  them  survive, 
we  find  their  outlines  complete  in  the  rock  from  head  to 
tail.  Dermal  plates  of  enamelled  bone  represent  the  head; 
dermal  scales,  also  of  enamelled  bone,  lie  ranged  side 
by  side,  like  tiles  on  a  roof,  in  the  lines  in  which  they 
originally  covered  the  body;  and  thickly-set  enamelled 
rays  of  bone  indicate  the  place  and  outline  of  the  fins. 
As  a  set-off,  however,  against  this  great  development  of 
dermal  skeleton  in  the  ganoids  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone, 
their  internal  skeletons  were  exceedingly  slight,  and  in 
whole  families  entirely  cartilaginous. 

The  middle  (lower)  platform  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone 
has  for  its  characteristic  organism  the  Cephalaspis,  or 
Buckler-head,  —  a  curiously  formed,  bone-covered  fish, 
with  a  thin  triangular  body,  and  crescent-shaped  head, 
somewhat  resembling  in  outline  a  shoemaker's  cutting- 
knife.  It  had  for  its  contemporaries  several  fishes  armed 
with  dorsal  spines,  of  which  only  the  spines  remain,  and 
of  a  gigantic  Crustacean,  akin,  as  shown  by  some  of  its 
plates,  to  our  existing  lobsters,  but  which  in  some  speci- 
mens must  have  exceeded  four  feet  in  length. 

It  is,  however,  on  the  lower  (middle)  platform  of  the 
system  that  we  find  its  organic  remains  at  once  most 
abundant  and  most  characteristic.  The  flagstones  of 
Caithness  and  Orkney,  and  the  nodule-bearing  beds  of 
Ross,  Cromarty,  and  Moray,  contain  more  fossil  fish  than 
all  the  other  formations  of  not  only  Scotland,  but  of  Great 
Britain,  from  the  Tertiary  deposits  down  to  the  Mountain 
Limestone.  There  are  strata  in  which  they  lie  as  thickly 
as  herrings  on  our  better  fishing  banks  in  autumn,  when 
the  fisherman's  harvest  is  at  its  best ;  and,  strange  to  say, 
not  unfrequently  do  the  fish  of  a  whole  platform  give  evi- 
dence, both  in  their  state  of  keeping  and  in  their  con- 


262  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

torted  attitude,  that  they  all  died  at  once,  and  died  by  vio- 
lent death.  We  see  them  still  presenting  over  wide  areas 
the  stiff  curved  outline  —  a  result  of  the  unequal  contrac- 
tion of  the  muscles  —  which,  as  in  the  case  of  recently 
netted  herrings,  marks  that  dissolution  had  been  sudden. 
We  find,  too,  that  their  remains  did  not  suffer  from  the 
predatory  attacks  of  other  fishes:  it  would  seem  as  if 
all  the  finny  inhabitants  of  wide  tracts  of  sea  had  been 
at  once  cast  dead  to  the  bottom,  so  that  not  an  individual 
survived,  to  prey  upon  the  remains  of  his  deceased  neigh- 
bors. It  was  the  first  remark  of  Agassiz,  when  introduced 
to  a  collection  of  fossil-fish  from  Orkney,  —  "All  these  fish 
died  by  violent  death," — a  remark  which  he  again  and 
yet  again  repeated  when  introduced  to  the  Old  Red  ich- 
thyolites  of  Cromarty  and  Morary.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  oldest  plant-covered  land  of  which  the  geol- 
ogist finds  distinct  and  certain  trace  in  this  country  was  a 
land  subject  to  incessant  fluctuations  of  level,  and  to  sud- 
den and  disastrous  invasions  of  the  sea;  and  that,  though 
suited  for  the  production  of  a  rank  and  luxuriant  flora, 
whose  numerous  denizens  lived  without  consciousness  and 
died  without  suffering,  or  for  animals  fitted  to  enjoy  the 
present  without  thought  or  fear  of  the  future,  and  to  whom 
life,  so  long  as  they  lived,  was  pleasure,  and  death  merely 
a  ceasing  to  be,  we  conclude  that  it  could  have  been  no 
fitting  home  for  creatures  of  a  higher  order,  whosB  nature 
it  is  to  look  before  and  behind  them,  —  before  them  with 
hope  or  with  fear,  behind  them  with  satisfaction  or  regret. 
And  these  strange  platforms  of  sudden  death  —  of  no  rare 
occurrence  in  the  marine  depths  of  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone —  show  that  the  sea  in  these  early  times  was  not  less 
subject  to  disastrous  catastrophe  than  the  land, — -that  that 
order  of  nature  which  we  now  term  its  fixed  order,  and 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  263 

on  whose  permanency  our  minds  have  been  framed  to  cal- 
culate, was,  if  I  may  venture  the  expression,  enacted,  but 
not  enforced,  and  so  the  breaches  of  it  were  scarce  more 
exceptional  than  the  observance,  —  that  life,  greatly  more 
emphatically  than  now,  was  the  least  certain  of  all  things, 
—  and  that  both  in  sea  and  on  the  land  the  young  and 
immature  earth,  like  an  inexperienced  and  careless  nurse, 
was  ever  and  anon  overlaying  and  smothering  its  off- 
spring. 

Among  the  various  ichthyic  families  and  genera  of 
the  Lower  and  Middle  Old  Red  Sandstone,  —  Acanths, 
Dipterians,  Ccelacanths,  and  Cephalaspians,  —  I  shall  refer 
to  only  two,  and  that  in  but  a  few  brief  words ;  the  one 
remarkable  for  its  great  size,  the  other  for  its  extraordinary 
organization.  The  Asterolepis  seems  to  have  been  one  of 
at  once  the  earliest  and  bulkiest  of  the  ganoids.  Cranial 
bucklers  of  this  creature  have  been  found  in  the  flagstones 
of  Caithness  large  enough  to  cover  the  front  skull  of  an 
elephant,  and  strong  enough  to  have  sent  back  a  musket- 
bullet  as  if  from  a  stone  wall.  The  Asterolepis  must  have 
at  least  equalled  in  size  the  largest  alligators ;  and  there 
were  several  points  in  which  it  must  have  resembled  that 
genus  of  reptiles.  Its  head  was  covered  with  strong  qsse- 
ous  plates,  ornately  fretted  by  star-like  markings,  and  its 
body  by  closely  imbricated  and  delicately-carved  osseous 
scales.  But  it  is  chiefly  in  its  jaws  that  we  trace  a  rep- 
tilian relationship  to  the  alligators.  The  alligators  among 
existing  reptiles,  and  the  Lepidostei  among  existing  rep- 
tile-fishes, are  remarkable  for  a  peculiar  organization  of 
tooth  and  maxillary,  through  which  certain  long  teeth  in 
the  anterior  part  of  the  nether  jaw  are  received  into  cer- 
tain scabbard-like  hollows  in  the  anterior  part  of  the 
upper  jaw.  The  hollows  receive  the  teeth  when  the 


264  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

mouth  is  shut,  as  the  scabbard  receives  the  sword.  Now, 
in  the  Asterolepis  this  reptilian  peculiarity  was  not  re- 
stricted to  a  small  group  of  the  anterior  teeth,  but  per' 
vaded  the  entire  jaw.  Beside  each  of  the  creature's  rep- 
tile ^teeth,  in  both  jaws,  there  was  a  deep  pit,  which 
received  the  reptile  tooth  opposite ;  and  thus,  when  the 
animal  closed  its  formidable  mouth,  the  jaws  would  have 
been  locked  together  by  their  long  teeth  and  deep  recip- 
ient hollows,  as  the  crenellated  jaws  of  a  fox-trap  lock  into 
each  other  when  we  release  the  spring.  *  The  other  ich- 
thyolite  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  to  which  I  shall  refer 
is  the  Coccosteus^  —  a  ganoid  that,  so  far  as  we  yet  know, 
was  restricted  to  this  formation.  Like  the  Pterichthys, 
with  which  it  has  been  classed,  it  was  provided  with  a 
helmet  and  cuirass  of  bony  plate;  but  its  caudal  portion 
seems  to  have  been  naked,  —  a  peculiarity  of  which  we 
find  no  other  example  among  the  ganoids  of  this  early 
time.  The  Coccosteus  was,  however,  chiefly  remarkable 
for  the  form  of  its  jaws.1  More  than  ten  years  ago  I  ven- 
tured to  state,  in  the  first  edition  of  a  little  work  on  the 
Old  Red  Sandstone,  that  the  jaws  of  this  ancient  fish 
seemed,  like  those  of  some  of  the  crustaceans,  and  of  some 
of  the  insects,  to  have  possessed  a  horizontal  action. 
Aware,  however,  that  I  was  on  dangerous  ground,  I  exer- 
cised, in  making  the  statement,  some  little  share  of  Scotch 
caution:  the  thing  was,  I  stated,  too  anomalous  to  be 
regarded  as  proven  by  the  evidence  of  the  specimens  yet 
found ;  and  I  mentioned  it,  I  said,  with  but  the  view  of 
directing  attention  to  it.  It  was  a  question,  I  thought, 
worthy  of  being  entertained,  and  so  I  craved  that  it  should 
be  entertained,  and  specimens  carefully  examined.  But 

1  The  Coccosteus  possessed  also  true  bony  vertebratae.     See  "  Siluria," 
p.  504,  new  edition.  —  W.  S.  S. 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  265 

• 

specimens  were  not  examined,  at  least  no  specimens  that 
threw  any  light  on  the  subject;  and  my  very  modified 
statement  respecting  it  was  written  down  a  blunder  on 
the  very  highest  authority.  I  kept,  however,  a  steady 
eye  on  the  rocks,  as  the  real  authorities  in  the  case ;  and, 
deeming  myself  bound  as  a  geologist  to  observe  carefully 
and  record  truthfully  whatever  they  revealed,  but  as  not 
in  the  least  responsible  for  the  anomalies  of  the  revela- 
tion, I  persisted  in  quietly  collecting  their  evidence  in  a 
suite  of  fossils,  which  has  now  fully  convinced  our  first 
comparative  anatomists  that  there  was  an  anomaly  in  the 
structure  of  the  jaws  of  this  ancient  fish,  unique  among 
the  vertebrata ;  and  that,  in  calling  to  it  the  attention  of 
the  scientific  world,  I  was  in  the  right,  not  in  the  wrong. 
The  under  jaws  contained  two  distinct  sets  of  teeth;  the 
one  set  or  group  in  the  line  of  t"he  symphysis,  the  other 
set  or  group  on  the  upper  edge  of  the  jaw,  and 'placed  on 
such  different  planes,  that  they  could  not  possibly  have 
been  brought  into  action  by  the  same  movement  of  the 
condyles.  And  there  are  on  the  table  specimens  which 
show,  that  while  the  group  in  the  customary  place,  the 
upper  edge  of  the  under  jaw,  were  made  to  act  against 
a  group  placed  in  the  nether  edge  of  the  upper  one  by  the 
usual  vertical  action,  the  groups  so  strangely  placed  in 
the  symphysis,  if  brought  into  action  at  all,  must  have 
acted  against  each  other  through  a  lateral  motion  alto- 
gether unique.  The  jaws  of  the  Coccosteus  are  interest- 
ing in  another  point  of  view,  as  being  perhaps  the  oldest 
portions  of  any  internal  skeleton  that  have  presented  their 
structure  to  the  microscope.  And  it  is  surely  not  tmin- 
teresting  to  see  the  osseous  substance,  destined  to  perform 
so  important  a  part  in  the  animal  economy,  presenting  in  so 
early  an  age  its  distinguishing  characteristics ;  in  especial, 

•23 


266  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

• 

those  arterial  haversion  canals  through  which  the  ancient 
blood  must  have  flown  for  its  nourishment,  and  those 
numerous  corpuscles  of  life-points  from  which  its  organi- 
zation began,  and  which  continued  to  remain  open  as  the 
sheltering  cells  in  which  its  vitality  resided.  Was  it  im- 
possible, in  the  nature  of  things,  we  ask,  that  life  could  be 
equally  diffused  over  hard  and  rigid  earth  built  up  into 
this  new  animal  substance,  bone?  and  was  it  therefore 
merely  sown  over  it  in  hollow  microscopic  points?  Is 
bone  rather  a  thing  strongly  garrisoned  by  vitality,  than 
itself  vital?  Direct  questions  cannot  always,  in  the  present 
imperfect  state  of  our  knowledge,  receive  answers  equally 
direct ;  and  these  are  questions  to  which  our  first  physiol- 
ogists might  hesitate  to  reply.  But  we  may  at  least  safely 
infer,  from  the  thorough  identity  of  the  osseous  material 
throughout  all  ages,  that  it  was  a  material  compounded  at 
all  times  by  the  same  Architect,  according  to  a  prede- 
termined recipe ;  that  it  is  He  who  built  up  the  corpuscles 
and  arranged  the  canals  in  that  ancient  jaw  which  so 
excites  our  curiosity,  that  now  maketh  in  the  human 
subject  "the  bones  to  grow;"  and  that,  in  his  eternal 
purposes,  the  existences  of  the  most  ancient  times  may  be 
woven  into  the  tissue  of  one  great  plan,  with  all  that  now 
exists,  and  with  all  that  shall  exist  in  the  future. 

In  retiring  into  the  remote  past,  and  descending  from 
formation  to  formation  as  we  retire,  we  have  now  reached 
that  great  Silurian  group  of  rocks  in  which,  so  far  as  the 
geologist  yet  knows,  fossils  firsfr,  appear,  and  which  repre- 
sents a  period  of  incalculable  vastness,  in  which  life,  ani- 
mal and  vegetable,  seems  to  have  had  its  earliest  begin- 
nings on  our  planet.  Enormous  as  is  the  depth  of  some 
of  the  other  systems,  —  such  as  the  Old  Red  and  the  Car- 
boniferous systems,  —  they  shrink  into  moderate  dimen- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  267 

sions  when  we  compare  them  with  the  truly  vast  Silurian 
deposit.  It  was  estimated  only  a  few  years  ago,  that  the 
entire  depth  of  all  the  fossiliferous  strata  did  not  much 
exceed  six  miles :  it  is  now  found  by  the  geologists  of  the 
Government  survey,  that  the  Lower  Silurian  strata  of 
North  Wales  are  of  themselves  about  five  miles  in  depth, 
while  the  Upper  Silurian,  as  estimated  by  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison,  are  about  a  mile  more.  Many  of  the  beds, 
too,  of  both  the  Upper  and  Lower  divisions  must  have 
been  of  exceedingly  slow  deposition,  —  formed  far  from 
land,  and  at  the  bottom  of  deep  seas :  nay,  there  are  Silu- 
rian Limestones  that  can  scarce  be  regarded  as  deposits 
at  all,  seeing  that  every  calcareous  particle  of  which  they 
are  composed  was  at  one  time  associated  with  animal  life, 
as  the  joints  of  crinoidea,  the  calcareous  framework  of 
corals,  or  the  shells  of  molluscs,  all  of  which  lived  and 
died  upon  the  spot  that  the  rocks  now  occupy.  And 
rocks  of  this  character,  when  of  any  considerable  thick- 
ness, must  have  been  very  many  years  in  the  forming. 
The  sagacious  Chalmers  saw  and  taught,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century,  that  "  the  writings  of  Moses  do 
not  fix  the  antiquity  of  the  globe : "  "  if  they  fix  anything 
at  all,"  he  said,  "  it  is  only  the  antiquity  of  the  species." 
But  there  were  few  among  either  teachers  or  pupils  who 
saw  so  clearly  as  Chalmers ;  and  when  the  geologist  first 
began  to  demand  a  long  tale  of  years  for  the  production 
of  all  the  stony  volumes  of  his  record,  it  was,  like  the 
long  price  which  the  ancient  sibyl  demanded  for  all  Tier 
volumes,  very  decidedly  refused  him.  Instead,  however, 
of  bating  in  the  demand,  or  acquiescing  in  the  denial,  the 
geologists  have  been  ever  and  anon  returning,  sibyl-like, 
to  drive  harder  and  yet  harder  bargains,  and  even  to  ask, 
as  they  do  now,  as  much  for  a  single  volume  as  they  form- 


268  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

erly  asked  for  the  whole;  but  their  library,  unlike  that 
offered  in  sale  to  the  old  Roman,  is  undergoing  no  diminu- 
tion in  bulk ;  on  the  contrary,  its  volumes  increase  in 
number  as  the  demand  made  for  each  is  raised.  But  it 
is  at  least  something  to  be  made  to  feel,  by  means  of  these 
time-marks  in  the  remote  distance,  that  eternity  is  not  a 
mere  idle  name,  which  at  times  children  employ  in  their 
catechisms,  but  a  great  and  awful  fact;  and  that  its  un- 
measurable  amplitude  of  duration  closes  as  completely 
around  the  systems  of  the  geologist  in  time,  as  the  infinity 
of  extension  closes  around  the  systems  of  the  astronomer 
in  space.  It  is  one  of  the  revealed  characteristics  of  the 
Adorable  Creator,  that  "from  everlasting  to  everlasting 
he  is  God." 

On  the  western  coasts  of  Ross  and  Sutherland,  on  a 
general  basement  of  broken  primary  hills  of  no  great  alti- 
tude, we  find  the  (  Cambrian)  deposit  occurring  as  a  series 
of  noble  mountains,  now  entirely  insulated  from  each  other, 
and  that  yet  give  evidence,  in  their  lines  of  nearly  horizon- 
tal strata,  that  they  once  formed  parts  of  a  continuous  bed, 
which,  ere  the  operation  of  the  denuding  agencies,  had 
overlaid,  to  the  depth  of  from  two  to  three  thousand  feet, 
the  gneiss  and  quartz  deposits  below.  They  now  exist, 
however,  as  a  group  of  magnificent  pyramids,  compared 
with  which  those  of  Egypt  are  but  the  toy  erections  of 
children ;  and  yet,  from  the  rectilinear  character  of  their 
abrupt  and  mural  precipices,  coursed  as  if  with  tears  of 
ashlar,  —  from  their  general  regularity  of  form,  their  utter 
bareness  of  vegetation,  and  their  rich,  warm  color,  which 
contrasts  as  strongly  with  the  cold  gray  tints  of  the  rocky 
platform  on  which  they  rest,  as  the  warm  color  of  our 
fresher  public  buildings  with  the  cold  gray  of  our  paved 
streets  or  squares,  —  they  seem  rather  works  of  human 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  269 

contrivance  than  productions  of  Nature.  Seen  from  the 
west  in  a  clear  summer  evening,  when  the  red  level  light 
falls  on  the  still  redder  stone,  but  at  a  sufficient  distance 
to  admit  of  those  softening  influences  of  the  atmosphere 
which  mellow  the  harsher  reds  into  crimson  and  purple, 
there  is  a  gorgeous  beauty  in  these  pieces  of  Nature's 
masonry  which  it  is  scarce  possible  to  exaggerate  in  de- 
scription. Beneath  and  in  front  we  see  a  tumbling  sea  of 
craggy  hills,  which  even  the  warm  gleam  of  sunset  scarce 
relieves  from  their  sober  tint  of  neutral  gray ;  while  rising 
over  them  abrupt  and  bold,  and  lined  with  their  horizontal 
bars,  appear  the  noble  pyramids  in  their  rich  vestures  of 
regal  purple,  —  the  monuments  of  an  antiquity  compared 
wilh  which  that  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon  belong  to  the 
morning  hours  of  a  day  not  yet  come  to  its  close.1 

But  it  is  peculiarly  in  the  southern  Silurian  portions  of 
the  kingdom  that  "scarce  a  mountain  lifts  its  head  un- 
sung." Yarrow,  Ettrick,  St.  Mary's  Loch,  Leader  Haughs, 
Tweedside,  —  especially  along  those  upper  reaches  of  the 
river  where  it  mirrors,  in  its  calmer  pools,  the  classic  ruins 
of  Melrose  and  Dryburg,  and  the  young  woods  of  Abbots- 
ford, — the  Galawater,  Teviotdale,  Lammermuir,  Galloway, 
and  Nithsdale,  the  springs  of  the  Doon,  the  hills  that 
rise  over  the  source  of  Dee,  and  the  "moors  and  mosses 
many"  where  the  "Stinchar  flows," — are  all  to  be  sought 
and  found  in  the  Silurian  region  of  Scotland.  It  will 
scarce  do  now  to  estimate  the  scenic  merit  associated  with 
these  names  at  its  actual  value.  The  words  of  sober  truth 

1  The  above  description  of  the  scenery  of  the  West  Highlands  is,  in 
fact,  that  of  the  Silurian,  although  written  before  Sir  Roderick  Murchison 
discovered  his  error  in  laying  down  these  mountains  as  Old  Red.  It  is 
inserted  here  to  fill  up  the  hiatus  in  description  which  would  else  occur. 
— L.  M. 

23* 


270  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

would  seem,  according  to  Wordsworth,  "  strange  words  of 
slight  and  scorn," — 

"  Wliat  's  Yarrow  but  a  river  bare, 

That  glides  the  dark  hills  under? 
There  are  a  thousand  such  elsewhere, 
As  worthy  of  our  wonder." 

Even  the  indomitable  good  nature  of  Sir  Walter  was 
scarce  proof  against  what  he  deemed  the  disparaging,  but, 
I  doubt  not,  truthful,  estimate  of  Washington  Irving. 
"Our  ramble,"  says  this  accomplished  writer,  in  his  "Ab- 
botsford,"  "  took  us  on  the  hills,  commanding  an  extensive 
prospect.  '  Now,'  said  Scott, '  I  have  brought  you,  like  the 
pilgrim  in  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  to  the  top  of  the 
Delectable  Mountains,  that  I  may  show  you  all  the  goodly 
regions  hereabouts.  Yonder  is  Lammermuir  and  Srnal- 
holme;  and  there  you  have  Galashiels,  and  Torwoodleq, 
and  Galawater;  and  in  that  direction  you  see  Teviotdale 
and  the  braes  of  Yarrow,  and  Ettrick  stream  winding 
along,  like  a  silver  thread,  to  throw  itself  into  the  Tweed.' 
He  went  on  thus  to  call  over  names  celebrated  in  Scottish 
song,  and  most  of  which  had  recently  received  a  romantic 
interest  from  his  own  pen.  In  fact,  I  saw  a  great  part  of 
the  border  country  spread  out  before  me,  and  could  trace 
the  scenes  of  those  poems  and  romances  which  had  in  a 
manner  bewitched  the  world.  I  gazed  about  me  for  a  time 
with  mute  surprise,  I  may  almost  say  with  disappointment. 
I  beheld  a  mere  succession  of  gray,  waving  hills,  line  be- 
yond line,  as  far  as  my  eye  could  reach,  monotonous  in 
their  aspect,  and  so  destitute  of  trees,  that  one  could  almost 
see  a  stout  fly  walking  along  their  profile ;  and  the  far- 
famed  Tweed  appeared  a  naked  stream,  flowing  between 
bare  hills,  without  a  tree  or  thicket  on  its  banks.  I  could 
uot  help  giving  utterance  to  my  thoughts.  Scott  hummed 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  271 

for  a  moment  to  himself,  and  looked  grave.  He  had  no 
idea  of  having  his  muse  complimented  at  the  expense  of 
his  native  hills.  '  It  may  be  partiality,'  said  he,  at  length ; 
'but  to  my  eye  these  gray  hills,  and  all  this  wild  border 
country,  have  beauties  peculiar  to  themselves.  I  like  the 
very  nakedness  of  the  land :  it  has  something  bold,  and 
stern,  and  solitary  about  it.' "  Yes ;  there  is  no  question 
that,  had  not  the  poets  thought  so,  they  could  not  have 
sung  so  honestly  and  warmly,  and,  of  consequence,  so 
successfully : 

"  The  poet's  lyre,  to  fix  his  theme, 
Must  be  the  poet's  heart;" 

and  so  let  us  with  a  good  grace  acquiesce  in  their  decision. 
The  border  land,  with  its  Silurian  groundwork,  has  its 
peculiar  beauties ;  and  no  one  could  portray  them  at  once 
so  graphically  and  so  discriminatingly  as  Scott  himself. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  passage  in  "Guy  Mannering,"  where 
he  describes  his  hero,  Brown,  and  the  redoubtable  Dandy 
Dinmont,  approaching  Charlieshope  after  the  rencontre 
with  the  gipsies  on  Bewcastle  Moor.  "  Night  was  now 
falling,  when  they  came  in  sight  of  a  pretty  river,  winding 
its  way  through  a  pastoral  country.  The  hills  were  greener 
and  more  abrupt  than  those  which  Brown  had  lately  passed, 
sinking  their  grassy  sides  at  once  upon  the  stream.  They 
had  no  pretensions  to  magnificence  of  height,  or  to  roman- 
tic shapes,  nor  did  their  smooth  swelling  slopes  exhibit 
either  rocks  or  woods;  yet  the  view  was  wild,  solitary, 
and  pleasingly  rural.  No  inclosures,  no  roads,  almost  no 
tillage:  it. seemed  a  land  where  a  patriarch  would  have 
chosen  to  feed  his  flocks  and  herds."  This  is  faithful  de- 
scription, at  once  beautiful  and  characteristic ;  and  such  of 
my  audience  as  remember  the  exquisite  landscape  of  the 


272  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

"Enterkin"  of  our  countryman  Harvey,  as  exhibited  at  the 
Royal  Institution  here,  in  —  if  I  remember  aright  —  the 
year  1846,  with  its  gray  rocks,  its  green  swelling  hills  of 
softish  outline,  and  its  recluse  and  houseless  valley  of  deep- 
est loneliness,  will  be  convinced,  as  I  am,  that  where  there 
is  in  the  mind  a  certain  prominent  requisite  present,  the 
region  of  the  Silurians  is  as  available  for  the  purposes  of 
the  painter  as  for  those  of  the  poet,  —  that  one  requisite 
being  the  not  very  definable  and  many-sided  faculty  repre- 
sented by  the  single  magic  word  genius. 

The  Silurians  of  Scotland,  though  of  very  considerable 
depth,  are  greatly  less  rich  in  organic  remains  than  the 
contemporary  deposits  of  England  and  the  Continent. 
Vast  beds  of  gray  slaty  rock,  hundreds  of  feet  in  thickness, 
seem  to  have  been  formed  at  the  bottom  of  profound  seas 
beyond  the  zero  line  of  animal  or  vegetable  life.  And  even 
in  the  cases  in  which  organisms  of  both  kingdoms  were 
present,  we  find  their  remains  very  imperfectly  preserved.1 
The  flora  of  the  system  in  Scotland  is  represented  merely 
by  a  few  dark-colored  carbonaceous  beds,  which  occasion- 
ally pass  into  an  impure  anthracite  or  blind  coal,  and  which 
are  probably  identical  in  their  origin  with  the  anthracite 
schists  of  Scandinavia,  regarded  by  Sir  Roderick  Murchi- 
son  as  the  remains  of  large  forests  of  algae  and  fuci,  which 
originally  existed  in  the  Silurian  seas,  and  which,  from 
their  perishable  nature,  have  lost  all  trace  of  their  original 
forms.  In  the  ashes  of  an  anthracite  of  our  Scottish  Silu- 


1  As  mentioned  in  the  preface,  it  is  stated  by  Sir  Roderick  Marchison,  in 
his  Leeds  address  to  the  British  Association,  that  twenty  species  of  Silu- 
rian fossils  have  been  discovered  by  Mr.  Peach  in  a  limestone  band  above 
tin-  Silurian  conglomerate  of  the  Western  Highlands,  determined  by  Mr. 
Salter,  and  carefully  examined  by  Sir  Roderick  himself.  They  are  Maclu- 
rea,  Murchisonia,  Cephileta,  and  Orthoceras,  with  an  Orthis,  etc.  —  L.  M. 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  273 

rians,  which  occurs  near  Traquair,  Professor  Nicol,  of 
Cork,  observed,  under  the  microscope,  tubular  fibres  un- 
questionably vegetable,  but  which  he  thought  indicative  of 
vegetation  of  a  higher  class  than  our  existing  algas.  There 
is,  however,  a  family  of  marine  plants  now  represented  on 
our  coasts  by  a  single  species,  which  had,  I  am  inclined  to 
think,  its  representatives  at  a  very  early  period  in  our  seas ; 
and  which,  had  it  existed  during  the  Silurian  ages,  could 
have  furnished  the  tubular  cells.  I  refer  to  the  Zostera,  or 
grass- wrack,  a  plant  of  the  pond-weed  family,  which,  unlike 
any  of  the  algas,  has  true  roots,  true  flowers,  true  seeds, 
tough  fibrous  stems,  and  grass-like  leaves,  traversed  by 
parallel  veins,  and  that  yet  lives  in  the  sea  among  lamina- 
rice  and  floridice^  far  below  the  fall  of  our  lowest  stream- 
tides.  It  is  worthy  of  notice,  too,  that  the  Zostera  marina, 
our  recent  British  species,  when  driven  ashore  on  parts  of 
our  coasts  at  certain  seasons. —  as  it  always  is,  in  great 
abundance, —  decomposes  into  a  substance  much  resem- 
bling peat,  that,  unlike  the  brown  pulpy  mass  into  which 
the  algas  in  similar  circumstances  resolve,  retains  distinct 
trace  of  the  vegetable  fibre.  It  is  further  noticeable,  that 
some  of  the  vegetable  remains  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone 
—  the  oldest  specimens  furnished  by  our  Scottish  flora  that 
present  aught  approaching  distinctness  of  outline — exhibit 
several  traits  that  remind  us  of  the  leaves  of  gigantic 
Zostera.  The  vegetable  impressions  of  some  of  the  Caith- 
ness flagstones  have  rectilinear  edges,  and  are  traversed  by 
parallel  lines,  scarce  less  strongly  marked  than  the  ridges 
of  the  Calamite ;  but,  from  the  extreme  thinness  of  the 
impression  left  in  the  rock,  they  seem  rather  the  veins  of 
leaves  than  the  fluted  markings  of  stems.  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible, therefore,  that  though  the  anthracite  beds  of  our 
Scottish  Silurian  system  give  evidence  of  the  existence  of 


274  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

a  higher  vegetation  than  that  of  the  algae,  it  may  have 
been  a  marine  vegetation  notwithstanding.  No  terrestrial 
plant  has  yet  been  detected  in  the  Silurians  of  either  Eng- 
land or  Scotland  :  the  flora  of  the  time,  within  at  least  the 
area  of  the  British  islands,  seems  to  have  been  a  poverty- 
stricken  flora  of  the  sea,  consisting  mainly  of  Fuci  and 
Algae,  and  including  as  its  highest  forms  a  species  or  two 
of  Zostera,  or,  as  is  more  probable,  of  some  extinct  analo- 
gous family. 

The  Silurian  fauna  in  Scotland  consisted  also,  so  far 
as  we  can  now  judge  from  the  broken  remains,  of  but  a 
few  marine  forms.  In  the  Silurian  deposits  of  England 
fishes  appear ;  but  in  our  Scotch  Silurians  we  find  nothing 
higher  than  a  Trilobite  or  a  cephalopodous  mollusc. 
The  Trilobite  was  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  organic 
form  of  the  system.  It  occurred,  also,  though  in  types 
specifically  distinct,  in  the  Old  Red  Sandstones  of  England 
and  the  Continent;  and  I  have  found  well-marked  spec- 
imens even  in  the  Mountain  Limestone  of  this  neigh- 
borhood,—  the  formation  in  which  the  family  finally  dis- 
appears ;  but  it  was  in  the  Silurian  system  that  it  received 
its  fullest  development,  both  in  size  and  number;  and 
portions  of  at  least  five  species  have  been  detected  in 
the  Silurian  deposits  of  Scotland.  The  Trilobite  was  a 
many-jointed  crustacean,  which  since  the  close  of  the  Car- 
boniferous period,  has  had  no  adequate  representative  in 
creation,  but  whose  nearest  allies  we  have  now  to  seek 
among  the  minute  Entomostraca,  especially  among  the 
genus  Branchipus,  —  little  insect-like  creatures,  occasion- 
ally found  in  stagnant  pools,  furnished  with  fin-like  legs, 
fitted  for  swimming,  but  not  for  walking  with,  and  that, 
spending  happy  lives,  darting  hither  and  thither  through 
the  upper  reaches  of  the  water,  now  swim  along  the  sur- 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  275 

face  on  their  backs,  and  now  on  their  abdomens.  The 
Trilobites,  like  the  Entomostraca,  seem  to  have  been 
furnished  with  merely  membranaceous,  oar-like  limbs,  and 
must  have  led  a  purely  aquatic  life  as  swimmers,  —  at  one 
time  oaring  their  way,  back  below,  along  the  surface  of 
the  sea,  at  another,  back  above,  along  the  bottom.  But 
some  of  these  Entomostraca  of  the  Old  Silurian  ocean 
were,  compared  with  their  modern  representatives,  of 
great  size.  The  Homalonotus  delphinocephalus  had  a  car- 
apace as  large  as  that  of  an  ordinary  market  crab,  and  the 
Asaphiis  tyrannus  and  Isotelus  megistos  were  each  of 
them  as  large  animals,  though  different  in  their  propor- 
tions, as  ordinary  market-lobsters.  But  it  seems  to  have 
beeu  characteristic  of  both  the  flora  and  fauna  of  these  an- 
cient times,  that  many  of  their  characteristic  forms  should 
unite  great  size  to  a  humility  of  organization  restricted 
in  the  present  ages  to  forms  comparatively  minute.  The 
Trilobites  of  the  Silurian  system,  like  the  Club-mosses  and 
Equisetaceae  of  The  Coal  Measures,  were  of  a  Brogdig- 
nagian  cast;  and,  regarded  as  Entomostraca,  we  must  hold 

—  to  return  to  a  former  illustration  —  that  we  look  upon 
them  with   eyes  sharpened    by  an   experience   acquired 
among  the  productions  of  Lilliput.      So  far  as  we   yet 
know,  the  higher  contemporaries  of  the  Trilobite  in  Scot- 
land were  chambered  shells  of  two  well-marked  genera, 

—  that  of  the  Orthoceratite,  a  long,  straight,  horn-shaped 
shell ;   and  that  of  the  Lituite,  which  may  be  described 
as  an  Orthoceratite  curled  up  into  a  scroll.     And,  asso- 
ciated with   these,  we   find  some   of   the    low  brachio- 
podous  molluscs  of  the  more  ancient  types,  such  as  Lep- 
tena3,  Orthes,  and  Spirifers.     But  by  far  the  most  char- 
acteristic  organisms  of  our  Scottish   Silurians   belonged 
to  a  low  zoophitic  family,  allied  by  some  of  their  affin> 


276  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

ities,  in  some  of  their  genera,  to  the  sea-pens,  and  by  cer- 
tain other  affinities,  in  some  of  their  other  genera,  to  the 
Sertularia.  They  are  known  to  the  geologist  by  the  gene- 
ral name  of  Graptolites.  The  Sertularia,  compound,  plant- 
like  animals,  that  •  resemble  miniature  bushes  in  spring, 
just  as  the  buds  are  bursting  into  leaf,  are  attached  al- 
ways, by  their  seeming  roots,  to  rocks,  shells,  or  sea- 
weed, and  so  require  a  hard  bottom;  whereas  the  sea- 
pens,  compound,  feather-like  Zoophites,  whose  every  fibre 
contains  its  rows  of  living  creatures,  affect  soft  muddy 
bottoms,  in  which  they  may  be  found  sticking  by  their 
quill-like  points,  like  arrows  in  the  soft  sward  around  a 
target.  I  have  seen  them  brought  up  by  scores  on  the 
lines  of  the  fisherman,  out  of  a  muddy  ravine  in  the  Mo- 
ray Frith,  that  sinks  abruptly  from  beside  the  edge  of  a 
hard  submarine  bank,  to  the  depth  of  thirty  fathoms ;  and 
have  often  admired  their  graceful,  quill-like  forms,  and 
their  delicate  hues,  that  range  from  pink  to  crimson,  and 
from  crimson  to  purple.  And,  judging  from  the  character 
of  those  gray  carbonaceous  deposits  in  which  the  Grap- 
tolites of  our  Silurian  rocks  most  abound,  it  is  probable 
that  they  also  were  mud-loving  animals,  and  more  resem- 
bled in  their  habitats,  if  not  in  their  structure,  the  sea- 
pens  than  the  Sertularia.  It  is  a  curious  circumstance 
that,  in  the  group  at  least,  the  Graptolites  of  Scotland  are 
more  obviously  allied  to  the  Graptolites  of  the  vast  Silu- 
rian deposits  of  Canada  and  the  United  States,  than  to 
those  of  the  Silurians  of  England.  With  this  curious 
zoophite  we  take  farewell,  in  Scotland,  of  life  and  organ- 
ization, and  the  record  of  the  paleontologist  closes.  The 
remains  of  no  plant  or  of  no  animal  have  been  detected  in 
this  country  underlying  the  rocks  in  which  the  oldest 
Ornptolites  occur. 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  277 

Beneath  the  SILURIAN  deposits  of  Scotland  there  rest, 
to  an  enormous  thickness,  what,  with  the  elder  geologists, 
I  shall  persist  in  terming  the  primary  deposits,  consisting, 
in  the  descending  order,  of  clay-slates,  mica-schists,  quartz- 
rocks,  primary  limestones,  and  the  two  varieties  of  gneiss, 
—  the  granitic  and  the  schistose.1  In  retaining  the  old 
name,  I  must,  however,  be  regarded  as  merely  holding  that 
these  rocks  were  actually  the  first-formed  rocks  of  what 
is  now  Scotland,  —  that  the  gneiss  was  gneiss,  and  the 
slate  was  slate,  ere  ever  our  oldest  fossiliferous  formations 
began  to  be  deposited,  or  the  organisms  which  they  contain 
had  lived  or  died.  Into  the  question  raised  regarding  the 
form  in  which  they  were  deposited,  or  the  condition  of 
our  planet  during  the  period  of  their  deposition,  I  do  not 
at  present  enter.  On  the  other  point,  however,  —  the  com- 
parative antiquity  of  these  unfossiliferous  rocks  in  Scot- 
land, —  the  evidence  seems  very  conclusive ;  the  base  of 
some  of  the  oldest  deposits  in  which  we  find  organisms 
inclosed  consists  of  broken,  and  in  most  cases  water- 
rolled,  fragments  of  the  gneisses,  quartz-rocks,  clay-slates, 
and  mica-schists  of  the  primary  regions  of  the  country.2 
These  primary  regions  are  of  great  extent.  The  gneiss 
region  contains  nearly  ten  thousand  square  miles  of  sur- 
face ;  the  mica-schist,  fully  three  thousand ;  and  the  quartz- 
rock  and  clay-slate  united,  about  fourteen  hundred  miles 
more.  Comprising  almost  all  the  Highlands  of  Scotland, 
with  the  greater  part  of  two  of  our  Lowland  counties, 
Banfishire  and  Aberdeen,  their  entire  area,  if  we  add  about 
fifteen  hundred  miles  additional  of  granite  and  primary 

1  Hugh  Miller  evidently  MOKE  THAN  SUSPECTED  the  history  of  the 
geology  of  the  north  and  northwest  of  Scotland,  as  developed  by  Mr. 
Peach  and  Sir  Roderick  Murehison  in  1858. —  W.  S.  S. 

2  See  Murchison's  "  Siluria,"  2d  edition,  App.  553,  554,  and  556. 

24 


278  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

porphyry,  docs  not  fall  short  of  sixteen  thousand  square 
miles.  It  would  be  a  bold  and  perilous  task  for  one  who 
has  in  some  degree  appreciated  those  sublimely  impres- 
sive word-paintings  of  the  Highlands  which  have  added  so 
largely  to  the  well-earned  celebrity  of  your  distinguished 
President,  and  which  seem  invested  with  the  very  atmos- 
phere of  our  hills,  or  who  has  seen  with  admiration  and 
delight  not  only  the  very  features,  but  all  the  poetry, 
of  our  noble  mountain  scenery,  glowing  from  the  canvas 
of  Macculloch  and  of  Hill,  —  it  would,  I  say,  be  a  perilous 
task  under  the  recollection  of  achievements  such  as  theirs, 
to  attempt  a  dull  analysis  of  the  geologic  principles  on 
which  the  peculiarities  of  our  Highland  landscape  depend. 
I  would  feel  as  if  I  were  bringing  you  from  the  studio 
of  some  heaven-taught  sculptor,  crowded  Avith  shapes  of 
manly  beauty  and  feminine  loveliness,  to  lecture,  amid  the 
melancholy  rubbish  of  a  dissecting  room,  on  the  articula- 
tions and  proportions  of  the  bones,  and  the  form  and 
position  of  the  muscles.  I  shall  venture,  therefore,  on 
merely  a  few  desultory  remarks,  and  shall  request  you,  in 
order  to  lighten  them  as  much  as  possible,  to  accompany 
me,  first,  in  a  sort  of  mesmeric  expedition  to  the  western 
extremity  of  Glencoe ;  at  which,  after  having  journeyed 
as  only  the  clairvoyant  can  journey,  let  us  now  deem  our- 
selves all  safely  arrived,  and  just  set  out  on  our  way  back 
again  by  the  Locft  Lomond  road.  In  the  course  of  our 
journey  we  shall  pass,  in  the  ascending  order,  over  all  the 
great  Primary  formations.1 

1  According  to  a  diagram  which  I  have  had  the  honor  of  receiving  from 
the  hand  of  Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  illustrating  his  latest  explorations  in 
the  north,  there  are  two  distinct  gneisses,  —  an  older  and  a  younger ;  the 
first  underlying  the  Cambrian  conglomerate  and  Silurian  fossil-bearing 
baud  of  the  west;  the  other  or  younger  gneiss  forming  part  of  the  central 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  279 

Let  us  first  mark  the  character  of  the  Glen,  —  not  less 
famous  for  the  severe  and  terrible  sublimity  of  its  natural 
features,  than  for  that  dark  incident  in  its  history  which 
associates  in  such  melancholy  harmony  with  the  terrible 
and  the  severe.  We  are  in  a  region  of  primary  porphyry, 
—  in  the  main  a  dark-colored  rock,  though  it  is  one  of  its 
peculiar  traits,  that  in  the  course  of  a  few  yards  it  some- 
times changes  its  hue  from  dark  green  to  black  or  a  deep 
neutral  tint,  and  from  these  again  to  chocolate  color,  to 
brick  red,  or  to  iron  gray.  But  the  prevailing  hues  are 
dingy  and  sombre;  and  hence,  independently  of  the  brown 
heath  and  ling,  and  those  deep  shadows  which  always 
accompany  steep  rocks  and  narrow  ravines,  a  sombre  tone 
in  the  coloring  of  the  landscape.  When,  however,  for  a 
few  days  the  atmosphere  has  been  dry  and  the  sky  serene, 
the  dark  rocks  seem  in  many  parts  as  if  strewed  over  with 
an  exceedingly  slight  covering  of  new-fallen  snow,  —  the 
effect  of  the  weathering  of  a  thin  film  of  the  compact  feld- 
spar, which  forms  the  basis  of  the  porphyry- into  a  white 
porcelanic  earth.  It  is,  however,  in  the  form  of  the  rocks 
that  we  detect  the  more  striking  peculiarities  of  the  por- 
phyritic  formation.  They  betray  their  igneous  origin  in 
their  semi-columnar  structure.  Every  precipice  is  scarred 
vertically  by  the  thick-set  lines  which  define  the  thin  irreg- 
ular columns  into  which  the  whole  is  divided;  and  as  the 
columnar  arrangement  is  favorable  to  the  production  of 
tall  steep  precipices,  deep  narrow  corries,  and  jagged  and 
peaked  summits,  the  precipices  on  either  side  are  tall  and 
steep,  the  corries  are  deep  and  narrow,  and  the  summits 

nucleus,  and  underlying;  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  conglomerates  and  ascend- 
ing fossiliferous  series  of  the  east.  Of  course,  the  Cambrian  will  contain 
fragments  of  the  older,  and  the  Old  Red  conglomerate  fragments  of  the 
younger  gneiss.  —  L.  M. 


280  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

are  sharp,  spine-like  and  uneven.  A  hill  of  primary  por- 
phyry, where  not  too  much  pressed  upon  by  its  neighbor 
hills,  as  trees  press  upon  one  another  in  a  thick  wood,  so 
that  each  checks  the  development  of  each,  generally  affects 
a  pyramidal  form ;  and  we  find  fine  specimens  of  the  reg- 
ularly pyramidal  hill  in  the  upper  part  of  the  valley,  just 
as  we  enter  on  the  open  moor.  I  may  mention,  ere  we 
quit  Glencoe,  that  the  more  savagely  sublime  scenery  of 
Scotland  is  almost  all  porphyritic..  There  is  only  one 
other  rock  —  hypersthene  —  which  at  all  equals  the  pri- 
mary porphyry  in  this  respect ;  and  hypersthene  is  of  com- 
paratively rare  occurrence  in  Scotland.  It  furnishes,  how- 
ever, one  very  noble  scene  in  the  Isle  of  Skye :  the  stern 
and  solitary  valley  of  Corriskin,  so  powerfully  described  in 
the  "  Lord  of  the  Isles,"  is  a  hypersthene  valley. 

Emerging  from  Glencoe,  we  enter  upon  a  scene  that, 
in  simple  outline,  abstracted  from  the  dingy  tone  of  the 
coloring,  and  the  bleak  and  scanty  vegetation  common  to 
both,  contracts  with  it  more  strongly  than  perhaps  any 
other  in  Scotland.  We  have  quitted  the  porphyritic  re- 
gion, and  entered  upon  a  region  of  granite  and  gneiss. 
Looking  back  from  that  most  solitary  of  Scottish  inns, 
King's  House,  we  find  that  we  can  determine  with  much 
exactness,  from  the  form  of  the  hills,  where  the  porphyry 
ends  and  the  granite  or  gneiss  begins.  The  last  of  the 
porphyritic  hills  is  a  noble  pyramid,  broken  into  dizzy  prec- 
ipices, and  lined  vertically,  like  some  of  our  semi-columnar 
traps ;  whereas  the  first  of  the  granitic  hills,  placed  imme- 
diately beside  it,  with  but  a  narrow  valley  between,  is  of 
rounded  outline,  —  a  mere  hummock  magnified  into  a 
mountain,  and  wrapped  round  by  a  continuous  cawl  of 
brown  heath.  On  the  other  hand,  we  see  the  granite  rol- 
ling out  into  a  moory  plain,  —  one  of  the  dreariest  in  Scot- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  281 

land,  —  and  forming  a  basin  for  a  long,  flat-shored  loch, 
whose  brown  waters  do  not  reflect  a  single  human  dwel- 
ling. Granite,  however,  does  not  always  present  features 
so  little  attractive.  It  is,  in  truth,  a  many-charactered 
rock.  In  general,  the  feldspar,  which  enters  so  largely  into 
its  composition,  contains  a  considerable  per  centage  of 
potash,  and  so  decomposes  readily ;  and  hence  the  rounded 
forms  of  many  of  our  granite  hills  and  boulders.  It  affects, 
too,  on  the  large  scale,  though  unstratified,  a  tabular  ar- 
rangement, and  sometimes  exists,  as  in  this  instance,  and 
in  those  dreary  parts  of  the  lowlands  of  Aberdeen  where 
the  patrimony  of  the  redoubtable  Sir  Dugald  Dalgetty  lay, 
as  extensive  and  usually  very  barren  plains.  But  in  other 
parts  it  has  little  or  no  potash  in  its  composition ;  and 
forming,  in  these  circumstances,  one  of  the  most  durable 
of  rocks,  its  peaks  and  precipices  stand  up,  as  in  Goatfell 
in  Arran,  with  all  the  porphyritic  sharpness  of  outline, 
un weathered  for  ages,  or  present,  as  in  Ben  Macdui  and 
its  Titanic  compeers,  features  at  once  bold,  broad,  and  sub- 
limely impressive.  Humboldt,  generally  so  correct  in  his 
"Views  of  Nature,"  seems  to  have  seized  on  the  granite  in 
but  one  of  its  aspects.  "  All  formations,"  we  find  him  say- 
ing, "  are  common  to  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  and  as- 
sume the  like  forms.  Everywhere  basalt  rises  in  twin 
mountains  and  truncated  cones;  everywhere  trap  porphyry 
presents  itself  to  the  eye  under  the  form  of  grotesquely- 
shaped  masses  of  rock ;  while  granite  terminates  in  gently 
rounded  summits." 

We  pursue  our  journey,  and  enter  on  a  great  gneiss  dis- 
trict. And  in  its  swelling  hills,  rolled,  like  pieces  of  plain 
drapery,  into  but  a  few  folds,  and  in  its  long  withdrawing 
valleys,  more  imposing  from  an  element  of  simple  extent 
than  from  aught  peculiarly  striking  in  their  contour,  we 

24* 


282  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

recognize  the  staple  scenery  of  the  Scotch  Highlands,  — 
the  scenery  of  ten  thousand  square  miles.  A  gneiss  hill 
is  usually  massive,  rounded,  broad  of  base,  and  withal  some- 
what squat,  as  if  it  were  a  mountain  well  begun,  but  in- 
terdicted somehow  in  the  building,  rather  than  a  finished 
mountain.  It  seems  almost  always  to  lack  the  upper  stories 
and  the  pinnacles.  It  is,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  a  hill 
of  one  heave;  whereas  all  our  more  imposing  Scottish  hills, 
—  such  as  Ben  Nevis  and  Ben  Lomond,  —  are  hills  of  at 
le:ist  two  heaves;  and  hence,  in  journeying  through  a 
gneiss  district,  there  is  a  frequent  feeling  on  the  part  of 
the  traveller  that  the  scenery  is  incomplete,  but  that  a  few 
hills,  judiciously  set  down  upon  the  tops  of  the  other  hills, 
would  give  it  the  proper  finish.  No  hill,  however,  accom- 
plishes more  with  a  single  heave  than  a  gneiss  one ;  the 
broad-based  Ben  Wyvis,  that  raises  its  head,  white  with 
other  snows  than  those  of  age,  more  than  three  thousand 
feet  over  the  sea,  and  looks  down  on  all  the  other  moun- 
tains of  Ross-shire,  is  a  characteristic  gneiss  hill  of  a  single 
heave.  Quitting  the  gneiss  region,  we  cross  a  compara- 
tively narrow  strip  of  quartz  rock.  The  quartz  hills  in  its 
course  are,  however,  not  very  characteristic.  Such  of  you 
as  may  have  sailed  over  the  upper  reaches  of  Loch  Maree, 
Avith  its  precipitous,  weather-bleached  pyramidal  hills,  so 
bare  of  vegetation  atop  that  their  peaks  may  be  seen 
gleaming  white  in  the  autumnal  moonlight  for  miles,  as  if 
covered  with  snow,  or  who  may  have  threaded  your  way 
through  the  deep  and  sterile  valleys  that  open  their  long 
vistas  towards  the  head  of  the  lake,  will  be  better  able  to 
conceive,  than  from  aught  witnessed  in  the  course  of  our 
present  day's  journey,  of  the  savage  wildness  of  scenery  — 
savage  and  wild,  but  grand  withal  —  which  is  the  proper 
characteristic  of  a  quartz-rock  district.- 


LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY.  283 

And  now,  the  strip  of  quartz  rock  passed  over,  we  enter 
into  an  extensive  region  of  mica-schist,  —  a  formation  so 
favorable  to  the  development  of  a  picturesque  beauty,  — 
ever  and  anon  rising  into  the  sublime,  —  that  what  is  pecu- 
liarly the  classic  ground  of  Highland  scenery  is  to  be  found 
within  its  precincts.  Loch  Awe,  Loch  Long,  Loch  Goil, 
Loch  Tay,  by  much  the  larger  and  finer  part  of  Loch  Lo- 
mond, all  Loch  Katrine,  Ben  Venue,  Ben  Lerli,  Ben  Lo- 
mond, and  the  Trossachs,  with  many  a  fine  lake  and 
stream  besides,  and  many  a  noble  hill,  are  included  in  this 
rich  province  of  the  mica-schist. 

We  first  become  aware  that  we  are  nearing  the  forma- 
tion by  the  peculiar  contour  of  its  hills,  as  seen  at  a  dis- 
tance of  several  miles.  As  we  approach  their  gray  rocks 
of  silky  lustre,  we  find  that  they  are  curved,  wrinkled, 
contorted,  so  as  to  remind  us  of  pieces  of  ill-laid-by  satin, 
that  bear  on  their  crushed  surfaces  the  creases  and  crump- 
lings  of  a  thousand  careless  foldings;  and  mark  farther, 
that  it  is  to  these  curves  and  contortions  of  the  strata 
that  the  tubercled  outlines  of  the  hills  are  owing,  and, 
with  these,  the  bold  projecting  knobs  and  sudden  recesses 
which  break  up  their  surfaces  into  so  many  picturesque 
wildernesses  of  light  and  shade.  Not  unfrequently,  how- 
ever, vast  masses  of  schist,  of  a  structure  as  dense  and 
solid  as  that  of  granite,  occur  in  the  micaceous  districts; 
and  these  form  hills  of  a  simpler  outline,  which,  like  the 
rock  which  composes  them,  seem  intermediate  in  character 
between  the  mica-schist  and  the  gneiss  hills.  All  the 
mica-schists,  however,  decompose  into  soils,  which,  though 
light  and  thin,  are  more  favorable  to  the  production  of  the 
grasses  and  the  common  dicotyledonous  shrubs  and  trees 
of  the  Highlands,"  than  any  of  the  gneisses  or  granites,  and 
greatly  more  so  than  the  porphyries  or  quartz-rocks ;  and 


284  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

so  the  micaceous  regions  are  not  only  more  picturesque  in 
outline  than  any  of  the  others,  but  also  richer  in  foliage 
and  softer  in  color.  A  tangled  profusion  of  vegetation 
forms  quite  as  marked  a  feature  in  the  living  and  breath- 
ing description  of  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  as  the  mural 
picturesqueness  of  the  crags  and  precipices  which  the 
vegetation  half  conceals ;  and  this,  be  it  remembered,  is 
not  an  ordinary  characteristic  of  the  Scottish  Highlands, 
though  true  to  nature  in  the  mica-schist  region  selected 
by  Scott  as  the  scene  of  his  story.  After  employing,  in 
describing  the  rocks  near  Loch  Katrine,  well  nigh  half  the 
vocabulary  of  the  architect,  —  spires,  pyramids  and  pinna- 
cles, —  towei-s,  turrets,  domes,  and  battlements,  —  cupolas, 
minarets,  pagodas,  and  mosques,  —  he  goes  on  to  say, 

"  Nor  were  these  earth-born  castles  bare, 

Nor  lacked  they  many  a  banner  fair; 
*   For  from  their  shivered  brows  displayed, 
Far  o'er  the  unfathomable  glade, 
All  twinkling  with  the  dewdrop's  sheen, 
The  brier-rose  fell  in  streamers  green, 
And  creeping  shrubs  of  thousand  dyes 
Waved  in  the  west  wood's  summer  sighs. 
Boon  nature  scattered  free  and  wild 
Each  plant  or  flower,  the  mountain's  child. 
Here  eglantine  embalmed  the  air, 
Hawthorn  and  hazle  mingled  there, 
The  primrose  pale  and  violet  flower 
Found  in  each  cliff  a  narrow  bower; 
Foxglove  and  nightshade,  side  by  side, 
Emblems  of  punishment  and  pride, 
Grouped  their  dark  hues  with  every  stain 
The  weather-beaten  crags  retain, 
With  boughs  that  quaked  with  every  breath; 
Gray  birch  and  aspen  wept  beneath ; 
Aloft  the  ash  and  warrior  oak 
Cast  anchor  in  the  rifted  rock ; 
And  higher  yet  the  pine-tree  hung 
His  shattered  trunk,  and  frequent  flung, 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  285 

Where  seemed  the  cliffs  to  meet  on  high, 
His  boughs  athwart  the  narrow  sky." 

Here  is  there  a  description  of  the  characteristic  vegetation 
of  our  richer  mica-schist  valleys,  not  more  remarkable  for 
its  poetic  luxuriance  than  for  its  strict  truth,  —  truth  so 
strict  and  literal,  that  I  question  whether  even  the  hyper- 
critic,  who  looked  for  but  a  typical  catalogue,  could  enu- 
merate more  than  two  forms  of  vegetation,  prevalent  in 
such  districts,  which  it  does  not  include.  The  ferns  grow 
at  once  singularly  rank  and  delicate  in  the  shade,  amid 
the  bosky  recesses  of  the  mica-schist ;  and  every  damper 
recess  of  the  rock  we  find  thickly  tapestried  over  by  the 
mosses  and  the  liverworts. 

Passing  southwards  along  the  dark  surface  of  Loch 
Lomond,  skirted  for  rather  more  than  two-thirds  of  its 
length  by  these  hills  of  mica-schist,  which  confer  on  its 
upper  reaches  a  character  of  mingled  picturesqueness  and 
sublimity,  we  enter,  nearly  opposite  the  pastoral  village  of 
Luss,  on  a  band  of  clay-slate,  —  the  last  or  most  modern 
of  the  primary  formations.  It  is  of  no  great  breadth,  — 
some  three  or  four  miles  at  most ;  but  it  runs  diagonally 
across  the  entire  kingdom,  from  the  western  shores  of 
Bute,  where  it  disappears  under  the  outer  waters  of  the 
Frith  of  Clyde,  to  near  Stonehaven,  where  we  lose  it  in 
the  German  Ocean.  We  find  it  associated  with  a  softer 
style  of  scenery  than  the  mica-schist.  Lacking  the  mul- 
titudinous contortions,  and  consequent  knobs  and  pro- 
tuberances, of  the  schist,  it  is  less  picturesque,  though 
scarce  less  beautiful;  nor  is  its  beauty  devoid  of  an  en- 
nobling mixture  of  the  sublime.  The  gracefully-contoured 
hills  that  rise  immediately  behind  Luss,  with  their  recluse 
withdrawing  valley,  —  the  green  rolling  meadoAv  on  which 
the  village  is  built,  —  and  in  front  the  bolder  and  finer 


286  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

islands  of  the  lake,  —  belong  all  to  the  clay-slate,  and  com- 
pose a  very  characteristic  landscape.  Dunkeld,  Comrie, 
and  the  fine  country  to  the  north  and  west  of  Callendar, 
including  Loch  Vennacher,  with  many  a  scene  besides/of 
a  character  intennediate,  as  becomes  their  place,  between 
the  Highlands  and  the  Lowlands,  occur  in  the  belt  of  clay- 
slate  that  sweeps  in  its  diagonal  course  from  sea  to  sea. 
Leaving  Luss  behind  us,  we  enter,  ere  quitting  the  lakes, 
on  what  is  unmistakably  the  low  country.  The  frame- 
work of  the  land  before  us  and  on  either  hand,  with  that 
of  about  one-half  the  lower  islands  of  Loch  Lomond,  is 
all  formed  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone ;  and  what  Byron 
would  perhaps  term  the  "domestic  beauties"  of  the  pros- 
pect, —  swelling  hills  ploughed  to  the  top,  green  lanes, 
rich  meadows,  and  woods  whose  rectilinear  edges  still  tell 
of  the  planter's  line,  —  bear  evidence  to  the  fact.  The 
land,  however,  is  that  of  Buchanan  and  of  Smollett.  Both 
were  born  on  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  here;  and  the  latter, 
in  his  well-known  description  of  the  lake,  in  "Humphrey 
Clinker," — the  product  of  a  time  when  descriptions  of 
Scottish  scenery  were  less  common  than  they  are  now, — 
places  in  the  foreground,  in  a  style  unmistakable  from 
their  truth,  the  features  of  this  Lowland  formation,  which, 
in  his  age,  was  unfurnished  with  a  name.  "  I  have  seen," 
he  says,  "the  Lago  di  Garda,  Albano,  De  Vico,  Bolsina, 
and  Geneva,  and,  upon  my  honor,  prefer  Loch  Lomond  to 
them  all,  —  a  preference  which  is  certainly  owing  to  the 
verdant  islands  that  seem  to  float  upon  its  surface,  afford- 
ing the  most  enchanting  objects  of  repose  to  the  excursive 
view.  Nor  are  the  banks  destitute  of  beauties  which 
even  partake  of  the  sublime.  On  this  side  they  display  a 
variety  of  woodland,  corn-fields,  and  pasture,  with  several 
agreeable  villas  emerging,  as  it  were,  out  of  the  lake,  till, 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  287 

at  some  distance,  the  prospect  terminates  in  huge  moun- 
tains covered  with  heath.  Everything  here  is  romantic 
beyond  imagination  :  the  country  is  justly  termed  the 
Arcadia  of  Scotland."  In  the  corn-fields  here,  the  wood- 
lands, and  the  pastures,  we  recognize  the  Lowland  features 
of  the  Old  Red  placed  prominently  in  the  foreground; 
and  in  the  huge  mountains  in  the  distance,  the  bolder 
Highland  features  of  the  clay-slate  and  the  mica-schist. 
In  still  journeying  southwards,  we  skirt  the  banks  of  the 
Leven,  —  the  stream  which  connects  .the  waters  of  the 
lake  with  those  of  the  Clyde,  and  which,  for  the  greater 
part  of  its  course,  runs  over  an  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  the 
same  age  as  that  of  Balruddery,  Carmylie,  and  Turin,  and 
which  presents  as  its  characteristic  organism,  the  Cepha- 
laspis.  And  nowhere  in  Scotland,  as  is  well  shown  in 
Smollett's  classical  Ode,  is  there  a  more  thoroughly  Low- 
land river. 

"Pure  stream,  in  whose  transparent  wave 
My  youthful  limbs  I  wont  to  lave ; 
No  torrents  stain  thy  limpid  source, 
No  rocks  impede  thy  dimpling  course, 
That  sweetly  warbles  o'er  its  bed, 
With  white,  round,  polished  pebbles  spread. 
Devolving  from  thy  parent  lake, 
A  charming  maze  thy  waters  make, 
By  bowers  of  birch  and  groves  of  pine, 
And  hedges  flowered  with  eglantine." 

Ere,  however,  closing  our  journey  of  a  day,  which  intro- 
duces us  to  so  interesting  an  epitome  of  the  scenery  of 
the  primary  rocks  and  the  Scottish  Highlands,  we  are 
startled  in  the  midst  of  the  low  country  by  scenery  which 
seems  to  be  that  of  the  Highlands  repeated,  but  on  a 
smaller  scale,  and,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  in  a  more 
mannered  style.  We  pass  over  a  narrow  belt  of  the  trap- 


288  LECTURES   ON   .GEOLOGY. 

rocks,  which,  like  the  stratified  deposits  of  this  part  of  the 
kingdom,  —  clay-slate  and  Old  Red  Sandstone,  —  runs 
from  sea  to  sea,  and  which,  including  in  its  range  the 
Campsie  and  the  Ochil  hills,  is  here  represented  by  the 
picturesque  double-peaked  rock  which  bears  the  ancient 
fortalice  of  Dumbarton,  —  the  castle  which,  according  to 
Jeanie  Deans's  friend,  Mr.  Archibald,  was  always  given  in 
keeping  to  the  best  man  in  Scotland,  —  at  one  time  to 
Sir  William  "Wallace,  at  another  to  the  Duke  of  Argyle. 

The  depth  of  the  primary  stratified  rocks,  which  in 
Scotland  must  be  very  great,  has  been  variously  estimated 
by  geologists,  as  low  as  five  and  as  high  as  ten  miles, — 
evidence  enough,  did  we  require  any  such,  that  there  must 
be  some  degree  of  obscurity  in  the  data  on  which  the 
calculations  regarding  it  have  been  founded.  It  is  always 
extremely  difficult  to  estimate  the  thickness  of  even  a 
clay-slate  or  quartz-rock  deposit  in  a  mountainous  coun- 
try, where  the  centres  of  disturbance  are  numerous  and 
involved ;  and  in  gneiss  and  mica-schist  —  always  greatly 
contorted  deposits  —  the  difficulty  is  so  enhanced,  that 
what  begins  as  calculation  usually  ends  as  guess.  But 
we  at  least  know  that  it  can  be  no  thin  series  of  deposits, 
however  much  their  strata  may  be  contorted,  or  however 
often  repeated,  that  covers,  in  highly  inclined  positions, 
tracts  of  country  so  extended  as  even  those  which  we  find 
covered  by  them  in  the  Scotch  Highlands.  In  crossing 
the  four  primary  stratified  deposits  —  clay-slate,  mica- 
schist,  quartz-rock,  and  gneiss,  —  at  right  angles  with  the 
line  in  which  they  traverse  the  country  in  the  southern 
division  of  the  Highlands,  we  find  them  occupying,  as 
from  near  CriefF  to  Fort-Augustus,  a  tract  rather  more 
than  sixty  miles  across ;  and  in  crossing  at  the  same  angle 
the  northern  division  of  the  Highlands,  —  as  from  Glen 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  289 

TJrquhart  to  the  middle  reaches  of  Loch  Carron,  —  we 
find  a  tract  of  nearly  forty  miles  occupied  by  the  gneiss 
alone.  The  question  is  one  on  which  I  would  not  choose 
to  dogmatize ;  but  an  estimate  that  gave  to  our  Scottish 
primary  rocks  an  aggregate  thickness  of  from  six  to  eight 
miles  I  would  not  regard  as  by  any  means  too  high.  A 
more  vexed  question,  however,  and  a  still  more  doubtful 
one,  respects  their  formation.  In  what  form,  and  under 
what  circumstances,  it  has  been  often  asked,  and  very 
variously*  answered,  were  these  stratified  primaiy  rocks 
deposited  ? 

They  exhibit  with  almost  equal  prominence  two  distinct 
classes  of  phenomena,  —  an  igneous  class  and  an  aqueous 
class;  and  are  as  intimately  associated  with  the  Pleistocene 
rocks  by  the  one,  as  with  the  sedimentary  rocks  by  the 
other.  I  have  seen  in  the  same  quarry  of  quartz-rock, 
one  set  of  strata  as  decidedly  chemical  in  their  texture  as 
porphyry  or  hypersthene,  and  another  intermingling  set 
as  decidedly  mechanical  as  grauwacke  or  conglomerate. 
I  have  seen,  too,  in  the  same  gneiss  rock,  the  minute 
plates  of  mica,  so  abundant  in  this  formation,  arranged 
between  the  layers  as  decidedly  on  the  sedimentary  prin- 
ciple as  in  a  micaceous  sandstone,  and  in  the  layers  them- 
selves as  decidedly  on  the  crystalline  principle  as  in 
granite.  And  this  compound  character  of  the  gneiss  may 
be  regarded  as  the  general  one,  with,  of  course,  certain 
exceptions  in  all  the  primary  stratified  rocks :  the  condi- 
tion of  their  stratification  is  mechanical  and  sedimentary, 
but  the  condition  of  the  strata  themselves  igneous  and 
chemical.  How  were  these  variously-blended  characters 
first  induced  ?  The  geologists  of  one  school  tell  us  that 
the  primary  formations  originally  existed  as  ordinaiy  sedi- 
mentary rocks,  but  that  they  have  since  been  altered  by 

*r  25 


290  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

the  action  of  intense  heat,  and  that,  while  the  stratifica- 
tion remains  as  an  evidence  of  their  first  condition,  the 
texture  of  the  strata  indicates  the  igneous  change  which 
has  passed  over  them;  while  the  geologists  of  another 
school  hold  that  their  first  deposition  took  place  under 
circumstances  essentially  unlike  any  which  now  exist,  on  at 
least  the  surface  of  our  planet,  and  that  their  inineralogical 
conditions  were,  in  consequence,  originally  different  from 
those  of  any  deposition  taking  place  at  the  present  time, 
or  in  any  of  the  later  geological  ages.  I  am  inclined  to 
hold  that  there  is  a  wide  segment  of  truth  embodied  in 
the  views  of  the  metamorphists ;  but  there  seems  to  be 
also  a  segment  of  truth  on  the  other  side ;  and  so  I  must 
likewise  hold  with  their  antagonists,  that  there  existed 
long  periods  in  the  history  of  the  earth  in  which  there 
obtained  conditions  of  things  entirely  different  from  any 
which  obtain  now,  —  periods  during  which  life,  either 
animal  or  vegetable,  could  not  have  existed  on  our  planet; 
and  further,  that  the  sedimentary  rocks  of  this  early  age 
may  have  derived,  even  in  the  forming,  a  constitution  and 
texture  which,  in  present  circumstances,  sedimentary  rocks 
cannot  receive. 

The  scientific  world  is  subject,  like  the  worlds  of  politics 
and  trade,  to  its  periods  of  action  and  reaction.  Those 
who  hold  that  the  earth  was  once  a  molten  mass  through- 
out, —  nay,  that  at  a  certain,  not  very  profound,  depth  its 
matter  may  be  still  in  an  incandescent  state,  —  may  have 
perhaps  driven  their  theory  too  far;  and  the  current  at 
present  seems  to  have  set  in  against  them.  Mr.  Hopkins's 
profound  deductions  on  the  phenomena  of  Precession  and 
Nutation  have  been  held  to  establish  that  the  crust  of  the 
earth  is  at  present  a  solid  unyielding  mass  to  the  depth  of 
at  least  a  thousand  miles  from  the  surface.  "Nay,  there 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  291 

is  nothing  in  this  inquiry,"  says  Professor  Nichol,  in  refer- 
ring, in  his  late  admirable  work,  "  The  Planetary  System," 
to  the  problem  of  Mr.  Hopkins,  —  "there  is  nothing  in 
this  inquiry  rendering  it  impossible  that  the  globe  is  solid 
throughout ;  and  assuredly,  a  distinct  negative  is  given 
to  a  whole  class  of  prevalent  geological  conceptions,  on 
grounds  vastly  more  solid  than  any  which  appear  to  sus- 
tain them."  And  I  find  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  in  the  latest 
edition  of  his  "  Principles," —  that  of  last  year,  —  suggest- 
ing the  existence  of  a  circle  of  superficial  action  on  the 
earth's  crust,  quite  sufficient  to  account  for  an  intermittent 
igneous  activity  altogether  independent  of  central  heat, 
and  which  might  go  on  by  fits  and  starts  forever,  and  be 
as  powerful  a  million  of  years  hence  as  in  those  incal- 
culably ancient  times  when  our  Scottish  gneiss  was  in  the 
forming.  Accepting  the  theory  of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy, 
of  an  unoxidized  metallic  nucleus  of  the  globe,  capable  of 
being  oxidized  all  around  its  porphyry  by  the  percolation 
of  water,  and  of  evolving  heat  enough  in  the  process  to 
melt  the  surrounding  rocks,  he  thus  provides  plutonic, 
metamorphic,  volcanic  agencies;  and  whereas  Sir  Hum- 
phrey Davy  held,  that  when  a  thick  crust  of  oxide  had 
once  formed  in  this  way,  it  served  to  shut  out  the  water, 
and  the  chemical  action  became  in  consequence  more  and 
more  languid,  till  it  altogether  ceased,  Sir  Charles  finds, 
in  another  but  harmonizing  theory,  an  expedient  for  rein- 
vigorating  the  slumbering  plutonic  forces,  and  thus,  after 
a  period  of  repose,  renewing  their  activity.  The  oxygen 
of  the  water  is,  of  course,  the  oxidizing  agent ;  but  water 
also  contains  hydrogen,  and  hydrogen  is  a  deoxidizing 
agent.  "When  the  oxidizing  process  was  going  on," 
says  Sir  Charles,  "much  hydrogen  would  of  necessity 
be  evolved  :  it  would  permeate  the  crust  of  the  earth,  and 


292  LECTURES   ON   GEOLOGY. 

be  stored  up  for  ages  in  fissures  and  caverns ;  and  when- 
ever it  happened  to  come  in  contact  with  the  metallic 
oxides  at  a  high  temperature,  the  reduction  of  these  oxides 
would  be  the  necessary  result."  And  we  have  thus  a 
circle  of  forces,  —  oxidization  of  the  metallic  basis  to 
evolve  the  plutonic  agencies,  and  deb'xidization  of  the 
oxides  to  produce  the  metallic  basis  again.  The  process 
would  somewhat  resemble  that  on  which  the  movement 
of  the  steam-engine  depends,  and  in  which  water  is  first 
expanded  into  steam,  and  then  the  steam  in  turn  con- 
densed into  water,  and  thus  the  action  of  the  engine 
kept  up. 

Now,  I  need  not  here  say  how  thoroughly  I  respect  the 
judgment  and  admire  the  genius  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell, — 
one  of  the  greatest  of  geologists,  and  a  man  of  whom  Scot- 
land may  well  be  proud ;  nor  need  I  say  how  much  of 
pleasure  and  instruction  I  owe  to  the  rich  and  eloquent 
writings  of  Professor  Nichol.  But,  like  Job's  younger 
friend,  I  too  must  take  the  liberty  of  showing  forth  my 
opinion,  and  of  giving  expression  to  a  conviction,  on 
grounds  of  which  my  audience  must  judge,  that  both  Sir 
Charles  and  the  Professor  have  suffered  the  reaction  wave 
to  carry  them  too  far. 

Mr.  Chai'les  M'Laren,  in  a  popular  digest  of  Mr.  Hop- 
kins's  deductions,  which  first  appeared,  if  I  remember 
aright,  in  the  "Scotsman"  newspaper,  and  then  in  "Jame- 
son's Philosophical  Journal,"  referred,  with  his  character- 
istic caution,  to  the  narrowness  of  the  base  on  which  they 
rested.  "Mr.  Hopkins's  conclusion,  no  doubt,  rests,"  he 
said,  "  on  a  narrow  enough  basis.  It  is  somewhat  like  an 
estimate  of  the  distance  of  the  stars  deduced  from  a  differ- 
ence of  one  or  two  seconds  in  their  apparent  position,  — 
a  difference  scarcely  distinguishable  from  errors  of  obser- 


LECTURES   ON    GEOLOGY.  293 

vation."  Let  us,  however,  waive  the  doubt  imp/ied  in  this 
remark,  however  important  we  may  deem  it,  and  grant, 
for  the  argument's  sake,  that  the  base  is  sufficiently  broad 
for  the  superstructure  erected  upon  it.  Let  us  freely  grant, 
after  first  availing  ourselves  of  Mr.  M'Laren's  protest,  and 
placing  it  on  record,  that  that  equatorial  ring,  thirteen 
miles  in  thickness,  which,  by  disturbing  the  balance  of  the 
earth,  is  the  cause  of  the  phenomena  of  Precession  and 
Nutation,  must  be  attached  to  a  consolidated  crust  of  at 
least  a  thousand  miles  in  thickness,  in  order  to  account  for 
the  extreme  slowness  of  the  peculiar  movement  which  it 
induces.  But  let  us  then  inquire  how  it  happens  that  this 
equatorial  ring  at  all  exists.  If  our  earth  was  always  the 
stiff,  rigid,  unyielding  mass  that  it  is  now,  —  a  huge  metal- 
lic ball,  bearing,  like  the  rusty  ball  of  a  cannon,  its  crust  of 
oxide,  —  how  conies  it  that  its  form  so  entirely  belies  its 
history  ?  Its  form  tells  that  it  also,  like  the  cannon  ball, 
was  once  in  a  viscid  state,  and  that  its  diurnal  motion  on 
its  axis,  when  in  this  state  of  viscidity,  e'  ..gated  it,  through 
the  operation  of  a  well-known  law,  at  the  equator,  and 
flattened  it  at  the  poles,  and  made  it  altogether  the  oblate 
spheroid  which  all  experience  demonstrates  it  to  be.  It 
may  be  urged,  however,  that  this  form  of  our  planet,  which 
seems  to  speak  so  unequivocally  of  law,  may,  after  all,  be 
but  accident.  If  so,  it  must  be  singular.  What  say  the 
other  planets  ?  Of  these,  the  form  of  three  may  be  at  least 
approximately,  and  that  of  one  exactly,  ascertained.  Ve- 
nus, Mars,  Saturn,  are  all,  like  our  earth,  oblate  spheroids, 
flattened  at  their  poles,  and  elongated  at  their  equators. 
Their  substance  must  have  been  spun  out  by  their  rotatory 
motion  in  exactly  the  line  in  which,  as  in  the  earth,  that 
motion  is  greatest.  But  while  we  can  only  approximately 
determine  the  values  of  the  equatorial  and  polar  diameters 

25* 


294  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

of  these  three  planets,  in  one  great  planet,  Jupiter,  we  can 
ascertain  them  scarce  less  exactly  than  in  our  own  earth  ; 
—  we  can  gauge,  and  measure,  and  fix  the  proportions 
which  his  equatorial  ring  bears  to  his  general  mass.  With 
a  diameter  about  eleven  times  larger  than  that  of  our 
planet,  and  rotating  on  his  axis  in  less  than  half  the  time, 
the  motion  of  the  surface  at  his  equator  must  be  more  than 
twenty  times  greater  than  that  of  the  earth's  equatorial 
surface,  and  his  equatorial  ring  ought,  even  in  proportion 
to  his  huge  bulk,  to  be  more  than  twenty  times  as  massive. 
And  what  is  the  fact?  While  the  thickness  of  the  equato- 
rial ring  of  the  earth  is  only  equal  to  about  one  three-hun- 
dredth part  of  the  earth's  diameter,  the  equatorial  ring  of 
Jupiter  is  equal  to  about  the  one  fourteenth  or  fifteenth 
part  of  his  diameter.  It  is,  as  the  integrity  of  the  law 
demands,  more  than  twenty  times  greater  in  proportion  to 
his  mass  than  the  earth's  equatorial  ring,  and  absolutely 
more  than  two  thousand  times  greater.  Here,  then,  is 
demonstration  tli  '  the  oblate  sphericity  of  the  earth  is  a 
consequence  of  the  ea.th's  diurnal  motion  on  its  axis ;  nor 
is  it  possible  that  it  could  have  received  this  form  when  in 
a  solid  state.  A  glass  ball  made  to  revolve  on  a  spindle, 
when  in  a  state  of  viscidity,  elongates  equatorially,  and 
flattens  at  its  poles ;  but,  if  allowed  to  cool  in  its  original 
form  as  a  sphere,  it  retains  its  perfect  sphericity  without 
change,  let  us  whirl  it  as  rapidly  as  we  may :  and  no  me- 
chanic ever  dreams  of  increasing  the  disk  of  a  grindstone 
simply  by  turning  it  round.  The  earth,  then,  when  it 
assumed  its  present  form,  could  not  have  been  a  solidified 
mass,  like  the  glass  sphere  when  cooled  down,  or  like  the 
grindstone. 

But  is  it  not  possible,  it  may  be  asked,  that  the  diurnal 
motion  may  so  act  on  the  depositions  taking  place  in  the 


LECTURES    ON   GEOLOGY.  295 

sea,  and  forming  sedimentary  rock,  or  on  a  region  of  igne- 
ous action  interposed  between  the  oxidized  crust  of  the 
earth  and  its  solid  metallic  nucleus,  and  forming  plutonic 
or  igneous  rock  —  is  it  not  possible  that,  in  the  course  of 
vastly-extended  periods,  the  earth  may  have  taken  its  form 
under  the  influence  of  the  motion  exerted  on  sedimentary 
deposition  and  plutonic  intrusion  and  upheaval?  Nay, 
what,  we  ask  in  reply,  are  the  facts  ?  Does  the  diurnal 
motion  exercise  any  influence,  even  the  slightest,  on  depo- 
sition or  plutonic  intrusion  ?  The  laws  of  deposition  are 
few,  simple,  and  well  known.  The  denuding  and  trans- 
porting agencies  are  floods,  tides,  waves,  icebergs.  The 
sea  has  its  currents,  the  land  its  rivers ;  but  while  some  of 
these  flow  from  the  poles  towards  the  equator,  others  flow 
from  the  equator  towards  the  poles,  uninfluenced  by  the 
rotatory  motion ;  and  the  vast  depth  and  extent  of  the 
equatorial  seas,  show  that  the  ratio  of  deposition  is  not 
greater  in  them  than  in  the  seas  of  the  temperate  regions. 
We  have,  indeed,  in  the  arctic  and  antarctic  currents,  and 
the  icebergs  which  they  bear,  agents  of  denudation  and 
transport  permanent  in  the  present  state  of  things,  which 
bring  detrital  matter  from  the  higher  towards  the  lower 
latitudes ;  but  they  stop  far  short  of  the  tropics  ;  they  have 
no  connection  with  the  rotatory  motion ;  and  their  influ- 
ence on  the  form  of  the  earth  must  be  infinitely  slight ; 
nay,  even  were  the  case  otherwise,  instead  of  tending  to 
the  formation  of  an  equatorial  ring,  they  would  lead  to  the 
production  of  two  rings  widely  distinct  from  the  equator. 
And,  judging  from  what  appears,  we  must  hold  that  the 
laws  of  plutonic  intrusion  or  upheaval,  though  more  ob- 
scure than  those  of  deposition,  operate  quite  as  independ- 
ently of  the  earth's  rotatory  motion.  Were  the  case  other- 
wise, the  mountain  systems  of  the  world,  and  all  the  great 


296  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

continents,  would  be  clustered  at  the  equator ;  and  the 
great  lands  and  great  oceans  of  our  planet,  instead  of  run- 
ning, as  they  do,  in  so  remarkable  a  manner,  from  south  to 
north,  would  range,  like  the  belts  of  Jupiter,  from  east  to 
west.  There  is  no  escape  for  us  from  the  inevitable  con- 
clusion that  our  globe  received  its  form  as  an  oblate  sphe- 
roid at  a  time  when  it  existed  throughout  as  a  viscid  mass. 
Nor  is  it  unworthy  of  remark,  that  the  same  arrangement 
through  which  a  fluid  earth  was  moulded  into  this  shape 
under  the  impulsion  of  the  rotatory  motion,  also  secured 
that  when  that  earth  came  to  be  covered  by  a  fluid  sea, 
placed  under  the  same  impulsive  influence,  it  should  cling 
to  it  equably,  like  a  well-fitted  cloak,  without  falling  off  to 
the  poles  on  the  one  hand,  or  accumulating  in  a  belt  round 
the  equator  at  the  other. 

But  time  fails,  and  I  cannot  follow  up  this  subject  to  its 
legitimate  conclusions.  Allow  me,  therefore,  simply  to 
state,  that  I  must  continue  to  hold,  with  Humboldt  and 
with  Hutton,  with  Play  fair  and  with  Hall,  that  this  solid 
earth  was  at  one  time,  from  the  centre  to  the  circumfer- 
ence, a  mass  of  molten  matter.  Let  us  remember  —  I 
employ  here  the  words  of  Humboldt  —  that  the  great 
chemist  Sir  Humphrey  Davy,  to  whom  we  are  indebted 
for  the  knowledge  of  the  most  combustible  metallic  sub- 
stances, renounced  his  bold  chemical  hypothesis  in  his  last 
work  ("Consolations  of  Travel"),  as  "inadequate  and  un- 
tenable ;"  and  further,  that,  with  the  oblate  sphericity  of 
the  earth  and  the  planets  to  be  accounted  for,  those  who 
continue  to  hold  what  he  rejected,  will  be  reduced,  if  they 
persist,  to  the  unphilosophical  necessity  of  regarding  as  a 
consequence  of  miracle,  a  peculiarity  of  shape  easily  ex- 
plainable on  the  principles  of  known  law. 

Now,  the  fact  of  a  molten  earth  involves  a  long  series  of 


LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY.  297 

conditions,  each  different  from  all  the  others,  and  from  the 
conditions  of  the  present  time.  It  involves  the  existence 
of  a  period  in  the 'history  of  our  planet  when  life,  animal  or 
vegetable,  was  not,  and  of  a  succeeding  period,  when  life 
began  to  be.  It  involves,  too,  the  ripening  of  the  earth, 
from  ages  in  which  its  surface  was  a  thin,  earthquake-sha- 
ken crust,  subject  to  continual  sinkings,  and  to  fiery  out- 
bursts of  the  plutonic  matter,  to  ages  in  which  it  is  the 
very  nature  of  its  noblest  inhabitant  to  calculate  on  its 
stability  as  the  surest  and  most  certain  of  all  things.  It 
involves,  in  short,  those  successive  conditions  of  life  in  the 
geologic  ages,  which,  in  connection  with  what  is  now  Scot- 
land, I  have,  I  am  afraid,  all  too  inadequately  attempted  to 
set  before  you  in  my  present  course.  In  fine,  the  primary 
rocks,  when  they  underlie  to  a  great  thickness,  as  in  our 
own  country,  the  Paleozoic  deposits,  I  regard  as  the  de- 
posits of  a  period  in  which  the  earth's  crust  had  sufficiently 
cooled  down  to  permit  the  existence  of  a  sea,  with  the 
necessary  denuding  agencies,  —  waves  and  currents, — 
and,  in  consequence,  of  deposition  also ;  but  in  which  the 
internal  heat  acted  so  near  the  surface,  that  whatever  was 
deposited  came,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  be  metamorphosed 
into  semi-plutonic  forms,  that  retained  only  the  stratifica- 
tion. I  dare  not  speak  of  the  scenery  of  the  period.  We 
may  imagine,  however,  a  dark  atmosphere  of  steam  and 
vapor,  which  for  age  after  age  conceals  the  face  of  the  sun, 
and  through  which  the  light  of  moon  or  star  never  pene- 
trates ;  oceans  of  thermal  water,  heated  in  a  thousand  cen- 
tres to  the  boiling  point ;  low,  half-molten  islands,  dim 
through  the  fog,  and  scarce  more  fixed  than  the  waves 
themselves,  that  heave  and  tremble  under  the  impulsions 
of  the  igneous  agencies ;  roaring  geysers,  that  ever  and 
anon  throw  up  their  intermittent  jets  of  boiling  fluid,  va- 


298  LECTURES  ON  GEOLOGY. 

por,  and  thick  steam,  from  these  tremulous  lands ;  and,  in 
the  dim  outskirts  of  the  scene,  the  red  gleam  of  fire,  shot 
forth  from  yawning  cracks  and  deep  chasms,  and  that  bears 
aloft  fragments  of  molten  rock  and  clouds  of  ashes.  But 
should  we  continue  to  linger  amid  a  scene  so  featureless 
and  wild,  or  venture  adown  some  yawning  opening  into 
the  abyss  beneath,  where  all  is  fiery  and  yet  dark, —  a  soli- 
tary hell,  without  suffering  or  sin,  —  we  would  do  well  to 
commit  ourselves  to  the  guidance  of  a  living  poet  of  true 
faculty,  —  Thomas  Aird,  —  and  see  with  his  eyes,  and 
describe  in  his  verse : 

"  The  awful  walls  of  shadows  round  might  dusky  mountains  seem, 
But  never  holy  light  hath  touched  an  outline  with  its  gleam; 
'T  is  but  the  eye's  bewildered  sense  that  fain  would  rest  on  form, 
And  make  night's  thick  blind  presence  to  created  shapes  conform. 
No  stone  is  moved  on  mountain  here  by  creeping  creature  crossed, 
No  lonely  harper  comes  to  harp  upon  this  fiery  coast; 
Here  all  is  solemn  idleness;  no  music  here,  no  jars, 
Where  silence  guards  the  coast  ere  thrill  her  everlasting  bars; 
No  sun  here  shines  on  wanton  isles;  but  o'er  the  burning  sheet 
A  rim  of  restless  halo  shakes,  which  marks  the  internal  heat; 
As  in  the  days  of  beauteous  earth  we  see,  with  dazzled  sight, 
The  red  and  setting  sun  o'erflow  with  rings  of  welling  light." 


NOTE. 

"The  only  shells  I  ever  detected  in  the  brick-clay  of  Scotland  occurred  in  a 
deposit  in  the  neighborhood  of  St.  Andrew's,  of  apparently  the  same  age  as  the 
beds  at  Portobello."  —  Lecture  Secontl,  page  106. 

NOTE.  —  Some  time  after  this  statement  was  made,  Mr.  Miller  devoted  himself 
to  a  farther  investigation  of  the  brick-clay  beds  in  the  neighborhood  of  Porto- 
bello, and  discovered  several  species  of  shells  in  situ,  especially  great  abundance 
of  Scrobicularia  piperata  which  he  has  described  in  a  paper  on  the  brick-clays,  to 
be  published  hereafter.  They  form  a  very  interesting  portion  of  his  Museum, 
now  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  "  But  for  him,"  said  an  accomplished 
geologist,  in  talking  with  me  on  the  subject,  "  we  would  have  known  nothing 
whatever  of  the  brick-clays."  — I*  M. 


DESCEIPTIVE  SKETCHES 


FROM 


A  GEOLOGIST'S   PORTFOLIO. 


DESCRIPTIVE  SKETCHES 


FROM 


GEOLOGIST'S    PORTFOLIO. 


GANOID  SCALES  AND  RAYS. 

THE  scales  of  the  ganoid  order  consist  of  three  plates, 
—  an  inner,  an  outer,  and  an  intervening  one.  The  outer 
is  composed  mainly  of  enamel,  and  retains,  when  entire, 
however  long  exposed,  much  of  the  original  dinginess  of 
hue  which  it  bore  in  the  quarry.  The  inner  is  a  plane  of 
porcelanic-looking  bone.  The  intermediate  plate  is  finely 
composed  of  concentric  lines,  crossed  from  the  centre  to 
the  circumference  by  finely  radiating  ones ;  and  when,  as 
mostly  happens,  this  middle  plate  is  exposed,  the  appear- 
ance of  a  mass  of  scales  through  the  glass  is  of  groat 
beauty.  The  rays  of  our  soft-finned  fish,  (Malacopterygii), 
such  as  the  haddock,  seem  as  if  cut  through  at  minute  dis- 
tances, and  then  reunited,  though  less  firmly  than  where 
the  bone  is  entire,  with  the  design,  it  would  seem,  of  giv- 
ing to  the  organs  of  motion  which  they  compose,  the  nec- 
essary flexibility,  somewhat  on  the  principle  that  a  carpen- 
ter cuts  half-through  with  his  saw  the  piece  of  moulding 
which  he  intends  bending  along  some  rounded  corner,  or 
forcing  into  some  concave.  But  in  the  ancient  ganoid 

26 


302  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

fish,  in  which  the  rays  are  bare  enamelled  bones,  and  nec- 
essarily of  great  rigidity,  the  joints  appear  real,  not  ficti- 
tious. We  see  them  cut  across  into  short  lengths,  a  single 
fin  consisting  of  many  hundred  pieces ;  and  the  problem 
lay  in  conceiving  how  such  a  fin  was  to  be  wrought, — 
whether,  for  instance,  each  detached  length  was  to  have 
its  moving  ligament ;  and  if  so,  how  a  piece  of  machinery 
so  very  complicated  and  multifarious  was  to  be  set  and 
kept  in  motion.  Here,  however,  I  found  the  problem  very 
simply  resolved.  The  rays  of  the  ganoid  fish,  like  its 
scales,  consist  of  three  plates,  —  two  plates  of  enamel,  one 
on  each  side,  and  an  interior  plate  of  bone.  Now  the 
joints,  —  though  so  well  marked,  that  in  rays  imbricated 
on  the  sides,  as  in  those  of  the  Cheirolepis,  the  imbricated 
markings  turn  the  corners,  if  one  may  so  speak,  just  as  the 
carvings  on  a  moulding  recounter,  as  a  workman  would 
say,  at  the  corners  of  a  building,  —  are  not  real  joints  after 
all :  they  reach  but  through  the  inflexible  enamel,  leaving 
the  central  plate  of  bone  undivided.  Like  the  rays  of  the 
Malacopterygii,  they  are  formed  on  the  principle  of  the 
half-sawn  moulding.  I  observed,  too,  that  the  inner  plate 
is  in  every  instance  considerably  narrower  than  the  plates 
of  enamel  which  rest  upon  it.  In  the  lateral  edges  of 
every  ray  which  composes  the  inner  portion  of  the  fin 
there  must  exist  a  groove,  therefore ;  and  in  this  groove, 
it  is  probable,  'the  connecting  membrane  at  one  time  lay 
hid,  performing,  like  an  invisible  hinge,  its  work  unseen. 

RECENT  BONE-BED    IN  THE  FORMING. 

I  ONCE  found  an  interesting  illustration  of  the  bone- 
bed,  coupled  with  at  least  one  of  the  causes  to  which  it 
owes  its  origin,  in  the  upper  part  of  the  Moray  Frith.  I 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  303 

had  been  spending  a  night  at  the  herring-fishing,  on  one 
of  the  most  famous  fishing-banks  of  the  east  coast  of  Scot- 
land, —  the  bank  of  Guilliam.  It  is  a  long,  flat  ridge  of 
rock  that  rises  to  within  ten  or  twelve  fathoms  of  the  sur- 
face. On  its  southern  edge  there  is  a  submarine  valley 
that  sinks  to  at  least  twice  that  depth ;  and  in  the  course 
of  the  night  our  boat  drifted  from  off  the  rocky  ridge,  the 
haunt  of  the*  herrings,  to  the  deepest  part  of  the  valley, 
where  scarce  a  herring  is  ever  found.  Our  nets  had,  how- 
ever, brought  fish  with  them  from  the  fishing-ground,  suf- 
ficient in  quantity  to  sink  them  to  the  bottom  of  the  hol- 
low ;  and  in  raising  them  up,  —  a  work  of  some  little 
exertion,  —  we  found  them  bedaubed  with  patches  of  a 
stinking,  adhesive  mud,  that,  where  partially  washed  on 
the  surface,  seemed  literally  bristling  over  with  minute 
fish-bones.  The  muddy  bottom  of  the  valley  may  be 
regarded  as  a  sort  of  submarine  burial-ground,  —  an  ex- 
tensive bone-bed  in  the  forming.  "  What,"  we  asked  an 
intelligent  old  fisherman,  "brings  the  fish  here  to  die? 
Have  you  observed  bones  here  before  ?"  "  I  have  observed 
them  often,"  he  said:  "we  catch  few  herrings  here;  but 
in  winter  and  spring,  when  the  cold  draws  the  fish  from 
off  the  shallows  into  deep  water,  we  catch  a  great  many 
haddock  and  cod  in  it,  and  bring  up  on  our  lines  large 
lumps  of  the  foul  bottom.  In  spring,  when  most  of  the 
small  fish  are  sickly  and  out  of  season,  and  too  weak  to  lie 
near  the  shore,  where  the  water  is  rough  and  cold,  they 
take  shelter  in  the  deep  here,  in  shoals ;  and  thousands  of 
them,  as  the  bones  testify,  die  in  the  mud,  not  because 
they  come  to  die  in  it,  but  just  because  their  sickly  season 
is  also  their  dying  season."  And  such  seemed  to  be  the 
true  secret  of  the  accumulation.  The  fish  resorted  to  this 
place  of  shelter,  not  in  order  that  they  might  die,  but  that 


304  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

they  might  live ;  just  as  people  go  to  poor-houses  and 
hospitals  with  a  similar  intention,  and  yet  die  in  them,  at 
times,  notwithstanding.  And  hence,  I  doiibt  not,  in  most 
instances  those  accumulations  of  fish-bones  which  men 
accustomed  to  the  use  of  the  trawl-net  find  in  detached 
spots  of  bottom,  when  in  other  parts,  not  less  frequented 
by  fish  in  the  milder  seasons,  not  a  single  bone  is  to  be 
found,  and  which  have  been  described  as  'dying  places. 
The  dying  places,  —  the  deep  burial-grounds  of  the  sea's 
finny  inhabitants,  —  will  be  found,  almost  always,  to  prove 
their  places  of  shelter.  And  hence,  it  is  probable,  many 
of  the  bone-beds  of  the  geologist. 

DIPTEKUS  MACROLEPIDOTUS  ABUNDANT  IN  THE  BANNISKIRK 
OLD  RED  OF  CAITHNESS. 

Let  the  reader  imagine  a  fish  delicately  carved  in  ivory, 
and  then  crusted  with  a  smooth  shining  enamel,  not  less 
hard  than  that  which  covers  the  human  teeth,  but  thickly 
dotted  with  minute  puncturings,  as  if  stippled  all  over 
with  the  point  of  a  fine  needle;  —  let  him  imagine  the 
enamelled  rays  lying  so  thickly  in  the  fins,  that  no  con- 
necting membrane  appears,  and  that  each  individual  ray 
consists  of  numerous  pseudo-joints,  so  rounded  at  their 
terminations,  that  each  joint  seems  a  small  oblong  scale, 
or  each  ray,  rather,  a  string  of  oval  beads ;  —  in  due  har- 
mony with  the  rounded  joints,  let  him  imagine  the  scales 
of  a  circular  form,  and  so  regularly  laid  on,  that  the  ruler 
ranges  along  them  in  three  different  ways,  —  from  head  to 
tail,  parallel  to  the  deeply-marked  lateral  line,  and  in  slant 
angles  across  the  body ;  —  immediately  under  the  gill- 
covers,  which  consist,  as  in  the  sturgeon,  of  but  a  single 
plate  a-piece,  let  him  imagine  two  strong  pectoral  fins  of 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  305 

an  angular  form,  with  an  interior  angle  in  each  covered 
with  small  scales,  and  the  rays,  as  in  the  case  of  the  tail, 
forming  but  a  fringe  around  it ;  —  let  him  imagine  the  ven- 
tral fins,  which  lie  far  adown  the  body,  of  an  exactly  simi- 
lar pattern,  —  angular  projections  covered  with  scales  in 
the  centre,  and  fringed  on  two  of  their  edges  with  rays ; 
—  exactly  opposite  to  these,  let  there  occur  an  anterior 
dorsal  fin  of  comparatively  small  size,  and  then  exactly 
opposite  to  the  anal  fin  a  posterior  dorsal  of  at  least  twice 
the  size  of  the  other;  —  let  the  anal  fin  be  also  large  and 
sweeping,  extending  for  a  considerable  way  under  the  tail, 
which  must  like  the  tails  of  all  the  more  ancient  fish,  be 
formed  mainly  on  the  under  side,  the  vertebral  column 
running  on  to  its  termination ;  —  and  the  fish  so  formed 
will  be  a  fair  representation  of  the  ancient  Dipterus.  Pre- 
senting externally  in  its  original  state  no  fragment  of 
skin  or  membrane,  and  with  even  its  most  flexible  organs 
sheathed  in  enamelled  bone,  it  must  have  very  much  re- 
sembled a  fish  carved  in  ivory.  What  chiefly  struck  me 
in  the  examination  was  the  peculiar  structure  of  the  ven- 
tral fins,  —  the  hind  paws  of  the  creature,  if  I  may  so 
speak.  Their  internal  angle  of  scales  imparts  to  them  an 
appearance  of  very  considerable  strength,  —  such  an  ap- 
pearance as  that  presented  by  the  hind  fins  of  the  Ichthy- 
osaurus, which,  as  shown  by  a  lately-discovered  specimen, 
were  furnished  on  the  outer  edges  with  a  fringe  of  cartila- 
ginous rays ;  and  I  deemed  it  interesting  thus  to  mark  the 
true  fish  approximating  in  structure,  ere  the  reptilia  yet 
existed,  to  the  reptile  type.  The  young  frog,  when  in  its 
transition  state,  gets  its  legs  fully  developed,  and  yet  for 
some  little  time  thereafter  retains  its  tail.  The  Dipterus 
seems  to  have  been  a  fish  formed  on  this  sort  of  transition 

plan. 

26* 


30t>  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

FOSSIL-WOOD  OF  THE  OOLITE  AT  HELMSDALE,  SUTHERLAND. 

What  first  strikes  the  observer  in  the  appearance  of  the 
fossil-wood  of  this  coast  is  the  great  distinctness  with 
which  the  annual  layers  are  marked.  The  harder  lines  of 
tissue,  formed  in  the  end  of  autumn,  stand  out  as  dis- 
tinctly on  the  weathered  surfaces  as  we  see  them  in  pieces 
of  dressed  deal  that  have  been  exposed  for  a  series  of 
years  to  the  light  and  the  air.  The  winters  of  the  Oolitic 
period  in  this  northern  locality  must  have  been  sufficiently 
severe  to  have  given  a  thorough  check  to  vegetation.  We 
are  next  struck  by  the  great  inequality  of  size  in  these 
layers,  as  we  find  them  shown  in  separate  specimens.  I 
brought  with  me  one  specimen  in  which  there  is  a  single 
layer  nearly  half  an  inch  in  breadth,  and  another  in  which, 
in  no  greater  space,  there  occur  fourteen  different  layers. 
The  tree  to  which  the  one  belonged  must  have  been  in- 
creasing in  bulk  fourteen  times  more  rapidly  than  that  of 
the  other.  Occasionally,  too,  we  find  very  considerable 
diversities  of  size  in  the  layers  of  the  same  specimen. 
One  year  added  to  its  bulk  nearly  half  an  inch ;  in  another 
it  increased  scarce  an  eighth  part.  Then,  as  now,  there 
must  have  been  genial  seasons,  in  which  there  luxuriated 
a  rich-leaved  vegetation,  and  other  seasons  of  a  severer 
cast,  in  which  vegetation  languished.  My  microscope,  a 
botanist's,  was  of  no  great  power ;  but  by  using  its  three 
glasses  together,  and  carefully  grinding  down  small  patches 
of  the  weathered  wood  till  it  began  to  darken,  I  could  as- 
certain with  certainty,  from  the  structure  of  the  cellular 
tissue,  what,  indeed,  seemed  sufficiently  apparent  to  the 
naked  eye  from  the  general  appearance  of  the  specimens, 
that  they  all  belonged  to  the  coniferae.  When  viewed 
longitudinally,  I  could  discern  the  elongated  cells  lying 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  307 

side  by  side,  and  the  medullary  rays  stretching  at  right 
angles  across;  but  my  glass  lacked  power  to  show  the 
glandular  dots.  When  viewed  transversely  the  regularly 
reticulated  texture  of  the  conifers  was  very  apparent.  A 
bluish-gray  limestone  adhered  to  some  of  the  specimens, 
and  bore  evidence  in  the  same  track.  It  abounded  in 
cones  and  fragments  of  cones,  in  what  seemed  minute 
needle-shaped  leaves,  and  in  thin  detached  pieces  of  bark, 
like  those  which  fall  off  in  scales  from  the  rind  of  so 
many  of  the  coniferse.  The  limestone  bore  also  its  fre- 
quent fragments  of  fern.  There  seemed  nothing  lacking 
to  restore  the  picture.  There  rose  before  me  a  solemn 
forest  of  pines,  deep,  shaggy,  and  sombre;  its  opening 
slopes  and  withdrawing  vistas  were  cheered  by  the  lighter 
green  of  the  bracken ;  and  far  beyond,  where  the  coast 
terminated,  and  the  feathery  tree-tops  "were  relieved  against 
the  dark  blue  of  the  sea,  a  long  line  of  surf  tumbled  inces- 
santly over  a  continuous  reef  of  coral. 

I  picked  up  one  very  fine  specimen,  which,  though  it 
weighed  nearly  a  hundred  weight,  I  resolved  on  getting 
transported  to  Edinburgh,  and  which  now  lies  on  the  floor 
before  me.  It  is  a  transverse  cut  of  a  portion  of  a  large 
tree,  including  the  pith,  and  measures  twenty-three  inches 
across.  In  the  sections  of  trees,  figured  by  Mr.  Witham 
in  his  interesting  and  valuable  work,  the  original  struc- 
ture seems  much  disorganized:  a  granular  radiating  spar 
occupies  the  greater  portion  of  the  interior ;  and  the  tissue 
is  found  to  exist  in  but  detached  portions.  Here,  on  the 
contrary,  the  tissue  exists  unbroken  from  the  pith  to  the 
outer  ring.  We  may  see  one  annual  circle  succeeding 
another  in  the  average  proportion  of  about  ten  per  inch ; 
and  though  we  cannot  reckon  them  continuously,  foi* 
there  are  darker  shades  in  which  they  disappear,  —  shades 


308  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

which  the  polisher  of  the  marble-cutter  may  yet  succeed 
in  dissipating,  —  the  number  of  the  whole  must  rather 
exceed  than  fall  short  of  a  hundred.  However  obscure 
the  geologist  may  be  in  his  eras  generally,  here  at  least  is 
the  record  of  one  century.  But  how  were  its  years  filled  ? 
I  sat  beside  the  root  of  a  newly-felled  fir  some  six  or  eight 
seasons  ago,  and  amused  myself,  when  the  severed  vessels 
were  throwing  up  their  turpentine  in  minute  transparent 
globules,  in  reckoning  the  years  by  the  rings,  from  the 
bark  inward.  Here,  I  said,  is  the  year  in  which  the  Re- 
form Bill  passed ;  and  this  the  year  in  wrhich  Canning 
died ;  and  this  the  year  of  the  great  commercial  crisis ;  and 
this  the  year  of  Waterloo ;  and  this  of  the  burning  of 
Moscow.  The  yearly  rings  of  the  Oolite  have  no  such 
indices  of  recollection  attached  to  them:  we  see  their 
record  in  the  markle,  but  know  no  more  of  contemporary 
history  than  that,  when  forests  showed  their  fringes  of 
lighter  green  on  the  hill-sides,  and  cell  and  fibre  swelled 
under  the  rind,  the  promptings  of  instinct  were  busy  all 
around  and  beneath,  —  that  the  pearly  ammonite  raised 
its  tiny  sails  to  the  breeze,  as  the  belemnite,  with  its 
many  arms,  shot  past  below, — that  nameless  birds  mingled 
with  flying  reptiles,  —  and  that,  while  the  fierce  crocodile 
watched  in  his  pool  for  prey,  the  gigantic  iguanodon 
stretched  his  long  length  of  eighty  feet  in  the  sand.  But 
who  shall  reveal  the  higher  history  of  the  time?  The 
reign  of  war  and  of  death  had  commenced  long  before ; 
and  who  shall  assert  that  moral  evil  had  not  long  before 
cast  its  blighting  shadows  over  the  universe,  —  that  there 
had  not  been  that  war  in  heaven  in  which  the  uncreated 
angel  had  overthrown  the  dragon, — or  that  unhappy  intel- 
ligences did  not  wander,  "seeking  rest,  but  finding  none," 
in  an  earth  of  "  waste  places,"  whose  future  sovereign  still 
lay  hid  in  the  deep  purposes  of  Eternity  ? 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  309 

ASTREA  OF  THE  OOLITE,   SUTHERLAND. 

The  same  deposit  in  which  I  found  the  wood  embed- 
ded, contains  large  masses  of  coral,  all  apparently  of  one 
species,  —  not  a  branching  coral,  but  of  the  kind  which, 
consists  of  large  stone-like  masses  covered  on  the  surface 
with  stellular  impressions,  framed  in  polygons,  and  which 
composes  the  genus  Astrea.  I  picked  up  one  very  fine 
specimen,  which  I  have  since  got  cut  through  and  pol- 
ished. It  presents  a  polygonal  partitioning,  of  a  delicate 
cream-color,  that  somewhat  resembles  the  cells  of  a  honey- 
comb. Each  cell  is  filled  with  a  brownish  ground  of  car- 
bonate of  lime ;  and  on  this  ground  of  brown  there  is  a 
cream-colored  star,  composed  of  rays  that  proceed  from 
the  centre  to  the  sides.  One  of  these  corals  measured 
two  feet  and  a  half  across  in  one  direction,  by  two  feet  in 
another ;  and  if  it  grew  as  slowly  as  some  of  its  order  in 
the  present  scene  of  things,  its  living  existence  must  have 
stretched  over  a  term  of  not  less  extent  than  that  of  its 
contemporary,  the  pine  of  the  hundred  rings.  Some  of 
the  masses  seem  as  if  still  adhering  to  the  rocks  on  which 
they  originally  grew ;  the  pentagonal  cells  are  still  open, 
as  if  the  inhabitants  died  but  yesterday ;  and  the  star-like 
lines  inside  still  retain  their  original  character  of  thin  par- 
titions, radiating  outwards  and  upwards  from  a  depressed 
centre.  In  other  instances  they  have  been  torn  from  their 
places,  and  He,  upturned  in  the  shale,  amid  broken  shells 
and  fragments  of  wood.  I  brought  with  me  one  curious 
specimen  perforated  by  an  ancient  pholas.  The  cavity 
exactly  resembles  those  cavities  of  the  existing  Lithodo- 
mus  shell  which  fretted  so  many  of  the  calcareous  masses 
that  lay  scattered  on  the  beach  on  every  side;  but  it  is 
shut  firmly  up  by  the  indurated  shale  in  which  the  speci- 


310  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

men  itself  had  lain  buried,  and  a  fragment  of  carbonized 
Avood  lies  embedded  in  the  entrance.  The  cave  is  cur- 
tained across  by  a  wall  of  masonry,  immensely  more 
ancient  than  that  which  converted  into  a  prison  the  cave 
of  the  Seven  Sleepers. 

RECENT  TYPES  OF  FOSSILS. 

An  imagination  curious  to  reerect  and  restore,  finds 
assistance  of  no  uninteresting  kind  among  the  pools  and 
beneath  the  bunches  of  sea-weed  which  we  find  scattered, 
at  the  fall  of  the  tide,  over  the  surface  of  the  Navidale 
deposits.  One  very  minute  pool  of  sea-water,  scarcely 
thrice  the  size  of  a  common  washing  basin,  and  scarcely 
half  a  foot  in  depth,  furnished  me  with  the  recent  types 
of  well  nigh  all  the  fossils  that  lay  embedded  for  several 
feet  around  it ;  though  there  were  few  places  in  the  bed 
where  these  lay  more  thickly.  Three  beautiful  sea  ane- 
mones—  two  of  crimson,  and  the  third  of  a  greenish-buff 
color  —  stretched  out  their  sentient  petals  along  the  sides; 
and  the  minute  currents  around  them  showed  that  they 
were  all  employed  in  their  proper  trade  of  winnowing  the 
water  for  its  animalcular  contents,  —  working  that  they 
might  live.  One  of  the  three  had  fixed  its  crimson  base 
on  the  white  surface  of  a  fossil  coral ;  the  pentagonal  cav- 
ities, out  of  each  of  which  a  creature  of  resembling  form 
had  once  stretched  its  slim  body  and  still  /ninuter  petals, 
to  agitate  the  water  with  similar  currents,  were  lying  open 
around  it.  In  another  corner  of  the  pool  a  sea-urchin  was 
slowly  dragging  himself  up  the  slope,  with  all  his  red 
fleshy  halsers  that  could  be  brought  to  bear,  and  all  his 
nearer  handspikes  hard  strained  in  the  work.  His  pro- 
gress resembled  that  of  the  famous  Russian  boulder,  trans- 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  311 

ported  for  so  many  miles  to  make  a  pedestal  for  the  statue 
of  Peter  the  Great;  with  this  difference,  however,  that 
here  it  was  the  boulder  itself  that  was  plying  the  hand- 
spikes and  tightening  the  ropes.  And,  lo !  from  the 
plane  over  which  he  moved  there  projected  the  remains 
of  creatures  of  similar  type ;  —  the  rock  was  strewed  with 
fossil  handspikes,  greater  in  bulk  than  his,  and  somewhat 
diverse  in  form,  but  whose  general  identity  of  character 
it  was  impossible  to  mistake.  The  spines  of  echini,  fret- 
ted with  lines  of  projections  somewhat  in  the  style  of  the 
pinnacles  of  a  Gothic  building,  lie  as  thickly  in  this  de- 
posit as  in  any  deposit  of  the  Chalk  itself.  The  pool  had 
its  zoophytes  of  the  arborescent  form,  —  the  rock  its  flus- 
tra ;  the  pool  had  its  cluster  of  minute  muscles,  —  the 
rock  its  scallops  and  ostrea ;  the  pool  had  its  buccinidae,  — 
the  rock  its  numerous  whorls  of  some  nameless  turreted 
shell ;  the  pool  had  its  cluster  of  serpula3 ;  the  serpulae  lay 
so  thick  in  the  rock,  as  to  compose,  in  some  layers,  no 
inconsiderable  proportion  of  its  substance. 

BRORA  COAL-FIELD  OTHER  THAN  THE  TRUE  COAL  MEASURES. 

A  coal-field  in  other  than  the  true  Coal  Measures  is 
always  an  object  of  peculiar  interest  to  the  geologist ;  and 
the  coal-field  of  Brora  is,  in  at  least  one  respect,  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  these  with  which  geologists  are 
yet  acquainted.  The  seams  of  the  well-known  Bovey 
coal  of  South  Devon  —  a  lignite  of  the  Tertiary  —  are 
described  as  of  greater  depth  ;  but  it  burns  so  imperfectly, 
and  emits  so  offensive  an  odor,  that,  though  used  by  some 
of  the  poorer  cottagers  in  the  neighborhood,  and  some  of 
the  local  potteries,  it  never  became,  nor  can  become,  an 
article  of  commerce.  It  is  curious  merely  as  an  immense 


312  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

accumulation  of  vegetable  matter  passing  into  the  mineral 
state, — as,  shall  I  venture  to  say,  a  sort  of  half-mineralized 
peat  of  the  Tertiary,  —  a  peat  moss  that,  instead  of  over- 
lying, underlies  the  diluvium.  In  the  Brora  coal,  as  might 
be  inferred  from  its  much  greater  age,  the  process  of 
mineralization  is  more  complete ;  and  it  furnishes,  if  I 
mistake  not,  the  only  instance  in  which  a  coal  newer  than 
that  of  the  carboniferous  eja  has  been  wrought  for  cen- 
turies, and  made  an  article  of  trade.  There  were  pits 
opened  at  Brora  as  early  as  the  year  1598 :  they  were 
reopened  at  various  intermediate  periods  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries ;  on  one  occasion  in  the 
middle  part  of  the  latter,  by  Williams,  the  author  of  a 
"Natural  History  of  the  Mineral  Kingdom,"  which  has 
been  characterized  by  Lyell  as  "  a  work  of  great  merit  for 
its  day ; "  and  during  twelve  years  of  the  present  century, 
from  1814  to  1826,  there  were  extracted  from  but  a  single 
pit  in  this  field  no  fewer  than  seventy  thousand  tons  of 
coal.  The  Oolitic  coal-field  of  Sutherland  stands  out  in 
prominent  relief  amid  the  ligneous  deposits  that  derive 
their  origin  from  the  later  geological  floras.  And  yet  its 
commercial  history  does  not  serve  to  show  that  the  specu- 
lations of  the  miner  may  be  safely  pursued  in  connection 
with  any  other  than  that  one  wonderful  flora  which  has 
done  so  much  more  for  man,  with  its  coal  and  its  iron, 
than  all  the  gold  mines  of  the  world.  The  Brora  work- 
ings were  at  no  time  more  than  barely  remunerative;  and 
the  fact  that  they  were  often  opened  to  be  as  often  aban- 
doned, shows  that  they  must  have  occasionally  fallen 
somewhat  below  even  this  low  line.  Latterly,  at  least, 
it  was  rather  the  deficient  quality  of  the  coal  that  mili- 
tated against  the  speculation,  than  any  deficiency  in  the 
quantity  found.  It  burned  freely,  and  threw  out  a  pow- 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  313 

erful  flame;  but  it  was  accompanied  by  a  peculiar  odor, 
that  seemed  to  tell  rather  of  the  vegetable  of  which  it 
had  been  originally  composed,  than  of  the  mineral  into 
which  it  had  been  converted,  and  then  sunk  into  a  white 
l'0ht  ash,  which  every  breath  of  air  sent  floating  over 
carpets  and  furniture.  And  so,  when  brought  into  compe- 
tition, in  our  northern  ports,  with  the  coal  of  the  Mid- 
Lothian  and  English  fields,  it  failed  to  take  the  market. 
The  speculation  of  Williams  was  singularly  unlucky.  He 
became  lessee  of  the  entire  field  about  the  year  1764,  and 
wrought  it  for  nearly  five  years.  There  occurs  near  the 
centre  of  the  main  seam  a  band  of  pyritiferous  concre- 
tions, which  here,  as  elsewhere,  have  the  quality  of  taking 
fire  spontaneously  when  exposed  in  heaps  to  air  and  mois- 
ture, and  which  his  miners  had  not  been  sufficiently  careful 
in  excluding  from  the  coal.  A  cargo  which  he  had  ship- 
ped from  Portsoy,  in  BanfFshire,  took  fire  in  this  way,  in 
consequence,  it  has  been  said,  of  the  vessel  springing 
a  leak ;  and  such  was  the  alarm  excited  among  his  cus- 
tomers, that  they  declined  dealing  with  him  any  longer 
for  a  commodity  so  dangerous.  And  so,  after  an  ineffec- 
tual struggle,  he  had  to  relinquish  his  lease. 

LONDON  MUSEUM  OF  ECONOMIC  GEOLOGY. 

In  the  Museum  of  Economic  Geology  now  in  the  course 
of  forming  in  London,  there  are  specimens  exhibited  of 
not  only  the  various  rude  materials  of  art,  furnished  by 
the  mine  and  the  quarry,  but  also  of  what  these  can  be 
converted  into  by  the  chemist  and  the  mechanic.  Not 
only  does  it  show  the  gifts  of  the  mineral  kingdom  to 
man,  but  the  uses  also  to  which  man  has  applied  them. 
The  rough  and  unpromising  block  of  marble  stands  side 

27 


314  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

by  side  with  the  exquisitely  polished  and  delicately-sculp* 
tured  vase.  The  bracelet  of  glittering  steel,  scarcely  of 
less  value  than  if  wrought  in  gold,  ranges  in  striking  con- 
trast with  the  earthy,  umbry  nodule  of  clay-ironstone. 
There  are  series  of  specimens,  too,  illustrative  of  the 
various  changes  which  an  earth  or  metal  assumes  in  its 
progress  through  the  workshop  or  the  laboratory.  Here, 
for  instance,  is  the  ironstone  nodule,  —  there  the  roasted 
ore,  —  yonder  the  fused  mass ;  the  wrought  bar  succeeds ; 
then  comes  the  rudely-blocked  ornament  or  implement; 
and,  last  of  all,  the  exquisitely  finished  piece  of  work,  as 
we  find  it  in  the  cutler's  warehouse  or  the  jeweller's  shop. 
I  am  not  aware  whether  the  museum  also  exhibits  its 
sets  of  specimens  illustrative  of  substances,  elaborated,  not 
by  man,  but  by  nature  herself;  and  elaborated,  if  one  may 
so  speak,  on  the  principle  of  serial  processes  and  succeed- 
ing stages.  The  arrangement  in  many  cases  would  have 
to  proceed,  no  doubt,  on  a  basis  of  hypothesis ;  but  the 
cases  would  also  be  many  in  which  the  hypothesis  would, 
at  least,  not  seem  a  forced  one.  It  was  suggested  to  me 
on  the  Brora  coal-field,  that  the  process  through  which 
nature  makes  coal  might  be  strikingly  illustrated  in  this 
style.  One  might  almost  venture  to  begin  one's  serial  col- 
lection with  a  well-selected  piece  of  fresh  peat,  containing 
its  fragments  of  wood,  its  few  blackened  reeds,  its  fern- 
stalks,  and  its  club-mosses.  Another  specimen  of  more 
solid  homogeneous  structure,  and  darker  hue,  cut  from  the 
bottom  of  some  deep  morass,  might  be  placed  second  in 
the  series.  Then  might  come  a  first  specimen  of  Bovey 
coal,  taken  from  under  its  eight  or  ten  feet  of  Tertiary 
clay,  —  a  specimen  of  light  and  friable  texture,  and  that 
exhibited  more  of  its  original  and  vegetable  qualities  than 
of  its  acquired  mineral  ones.  A  second  specimen,  brought 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  315 

from  a  deeper  bed  of  the  same  deposit,  might  be  chosen 
by  the  darker  brown  of  its  color,  and  its  nearer  "approxi- 
mation to  the  structure  of  pit-coal.  The  Oolitic  coal  of 
the  Brora  or  Yorkshire  field  might  furnish  at  least  two 
specimens  more.  And  thus  the  collector  might  pass  on, 
by  easy  gradations,  to  the  true  Coal  Measures,  and  down 
through  these  to  the  deeply-seated  anthracite  of  Ireland, 
or  the  still-  more  deeply-seated  anthracite  of  America,  — 
not  altogether  so  assured  of  his  arrangement,  perhaps,  as 
in  dealing  with  the  processes  of  the  laboratory  or  the 
workshop,  but  at  least  tolerably  sure  that  both  chemists 
and  naturalists  would  find  fewer  reasons  to  challenge  than 
to  confirm  it. 

BRORA  PEAT-MOSSES  OF  THE  OOLITE. 

The  Brora  field,  so  various  in  its  deposits,  must  have  ex- 
isted in  many  various  states,  —  now  covered  by  salt  water, 
now  by  fresh,  —  now  underlying  some  sluggish  estuary, — 
now  presenting,  perchance,  a  superaqueous  surface,  dark- 
ened by  accumulations  of  vegetable  matter,  —  and  now, 
again,  let  down  into  the  green  depths  of  the  sea.  To  real- 
ize such  a  change  as  the  last,  one  has  but  to  cross  the 
Moray  Frith  at  this  point  to  the  opposite  land,  and  there 
see  a  peat-moss  covered,  during  stream  tides,  by  from  two 
to  three  fathoms  of  water,  and  partially  overlaid  by  a 
stratum  of  sea-sand,  charged  with  its  characteristic  shells. 
It  is  a  small  coal-bed,  kneaded  out  and  laid  by,  though 
still  in  its  state  of  extremest  unripeness,  —  a  coal-bed  in 
the  raw  material ;  and  there  are  not  a  few  such  on  the 
coasts  of  both  Britain  and  Ireland.  Professor  Fleming's 
description  of  the  submerged  forests  of  the  Friths  of 
Forth  and  Tay  must  be  familiar  to  many  of  my  readers. 


316  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

They  must  have  heard,  too,  through  the  far-known  "Prin- 
ciples "  .of  Lyell,  of  the  submerged  forests  of  Lancashire. 
"In  passing  over  Slack  Sod  Bay,  in  a  clear,  calm  morn- 
ing," says  a  late  tourist  in  Erris  and  Tyrawly,  "I  could 
see,  fathoms  down,  the  roots  of  trees  that  seemed  of  the 
same  sort  as  are  every  day  dug  out  of  our  bogs."  Now, 
we  do  not  know  that  the  Oolite  had  properly  its  peat- 
mosses. The  climate,  though  its  pines  had.  their  well- 
marked  annual  rings,  seems,  judging  from  its  other  pro- 
ductions, to  have  been  warmer  than  those  in  which  peat 
now  accumulates ;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  both  it 
and  the  true  Coal  Measures  must  have  had  their  vast 
accumulations  of  vegetable  matter,  formed,  in  many  in- 
stances, on  the  spot  on  which  the  vegetable  matter  grew ; 
and  no  one  surely  need  ask  a  better  definition  of  a  peat- 
moss. A  peat-moss,  in  the  present  state  of  things,  is  sim- 
ply an  accumulation  of  vegetable  matter  formed  on  the 
spot  on  which  it  grew.  These,  as  I  have  said,  we  fre- 
quently find  let  down  on  our  coasts  far  beneath  the  sea- 
level,  and  covered  up  by  marine  deposits ;  and  the  fact 
furnishes  a  first  and  important  step  in  the  proposed  serial 
arrangement  of  coal  in  the  forming.  May  I  not  further 
add,  that  Professor  Johnston,  of  Durham,  so  well  known 
in  the  field  of  geological  chemistry,  regards  all  our  coal- 
seams,  whether  of  the  Carboniferous  period  or  of  the  Oo- 
litic, as  mere  beds  of  ancient  peat,  mineralized  in  the  labo- 
ratory of  Nature  ? 

QUARRY  OF  BRAAMBURY  UPPER  OOLITE,  SUTHERLAND. 

On  entering  the  quarry  hollowed  on  the  southern  emi- 
nence, one  is  first  struck  by  the  character  of  the  broken 
masses  of  stone  that  lie  scattered  over  the  excavations. 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  317 

The  rubbish  abounds  'in  what  seem  fragments  of  a  very 
exquisite  sculpture.  The  shells  and  lignites,  which  it  con- 
tains in  vast  numbers,  exist  as  mere  impressions  in  the 
white  sandstone,  and  look  as  if  fresh  from  the  chisel  of  a 
Thorn  or  Forrest.  But  even  these  masters  of  their  art 
would  confess  themselves  outdone  here  in  beauty  of  finish. 
Their  best  works  don't  stand  the  microscope  ;  whereas  the 
carvings  of  the  Upper  Oolite  here,  though  in  sandstone, 
mightily  improve  under  it.  The  cast  of  a  broken  frag- 
ment of  wood  at  present  before  me  shows  not  only  the 
markings  of  the  annual  rings,  but  also  the  microscopic 
stria3  of  the  vegetable  fibre,  —  a  niceness  of  impression 
impossible  in  any  sandstone  that  had  not  what  the  sand- 
stones of  this  quarry  have,  —  a  large  mixture  of  calcare- 
ous cement.  I  remember  that,  on  my  first  introduction  to 
the  excavations  of  Braambury,  —  for  such  is  the  name  of 
the  quarry,  —  the  vast  amount  of  what  seemed  broken 
sculpture  in  the  rubbish  reminded  me  of  some  of  Ten- 
nant's  singularly  happy  descriptions  in  his  "Dingin  down 
o'  the  Cathedral."  They  seemed  mememorials  of  a  time 
when,  to  the  signal  detriment  of  ecclesiastical  architecture 
in  Scotland,  and  all  the  good  solid  religion  that  springs 
out  of  sandstone, 

"  Hk  tirlie-wirlie  mament  bra, 

That  had  for  centuries  ane  and  a' 

Brankit  on  bunker  or  on  wa', 

Cam  tumblin  tap  o'er  tail    *    * 

Whan  in  ilk  kirk  the  angry  folk 

Carv't  wark,  an  arch,  an  pillar  broke." 

I  had  not  a  few  other  recollections  of  the  quarry  of 
Braambury.  Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  to  the  geol- 
ogist than  its  fossils,  and  nothing  more  annoying,  at  times, 
to  the  workman.  Occurring  often  in  the  wrought  stone, 
they  occasion  sad  gaps  and  deplorable  breaches,  where  the 

27* 


318  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

plane  should  be  smooth  or  the  moulding  sharp.  I  remem- 
ber laying  open,  on  one  occasion,  a  beautiful  cast  that  had 
once  been  a  belemnite,  but  that  had  become  a  mere  cavity 
in  which  a  belemnite  might  be  moulded,  —  for  even  this 
solid  fossil,  that  so  doggedly  preserves  its  substance  in 
most  other  deposits,  is  absorbed  by  the  sandstone  of 
Braambury.  And  greatly  did  I  admire  its  peculiar  state 
of  keeping.  The  smooth,  cylindrical  hollow  was  partitioned 
across  by  two  stony  diaphragms,  thin  as  bits  of  drawing- 
paper;  for  ere  the  absorbing-process  had  begun,  the  fossil 
had  been  broken  into  three  pieces  by  the  superincumbent 
weight,  and  the  minute  strips  of  sand  which  had  filled  up 
the  cracks  had  hardened  into  stone.  The  point  was  sharp 
and  smooth ;  a  rectilinear  convex  ridge  showed  the  place 
of  the  abdominal  groove  ;  a  cone  at  the  base,  lined  trans- 
versely, represented  the  chambered  shell  of  the  interior. 
There  could  not  be  a  more  interesting  specimen  for  a 
museum ;  but,  alas  !  it  occupied  the  polished  plane  of  a 
tombstone,  just  where  the  hicjacet  should  have  been  ;  and 
though  it  symbolized  the  sentence  wonderfully  well,  it  was 
a  symbol  which  I  feared  few  would  succeed  in  interpreting. 
I  pointed  it  out  to  a  brother  workman.  "Ah,"  said  he, 
"you  have  got  one  of  these  terrrible  tangle-holes;  they're 
the  dash'dest  things  in  all  the  quarry." 

Many  a  curious  thing  besides  does  this  quarry  contain  : 
boles  of  trees,  that  look  as  if  sculptured  in  the  white  sand- 
stone, with  their  gnarled  and  twisted  knots  and  furrowed 
rinds ;  striated  reeds  of  the  same  brittle  material,  that 
seem  the  fluted  columns  of  architectural  models ;  club- 
mosses,  with  their  gracefully-disposed  branches;  rounded 
stems,  scaled  like  the  cones  of  the  fir ;  impressions  of  fi- 
brous, sword-shaped  leaves,  that  resemble  the  leaves  of 
the  iris ;  and  the  casts  of  fragmentary  masses  of  timber, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  319 

deeply  fretted  by  the  involved  and  tortuous  gnawings  of 
some  marine  worm.  Such  are  a  few  of  the  sculptured 
representations  of  the  flora  of  the  period,  —  things  more 
delicate  by  a  great  deal  than  those  carved  flowers  of  Mel- 
rose  which  we  find  described  with  such  picturesque  effect 
by  Sir  Walter.  And  its  fauna  we  see  represented  quite  as 
interestingly  as  its  flora.  Its  sculptured  Pectens  remind  us 
of  those  of  a  Grecian  frieze ;  a  beautifully-ribbed  Cardium 
has  proved  a  still  finer  subject  for  the  chisel;  its  Gryphites 
stand  out  in  the  boldest  style  of  art.  One  very  striking 
Ammonite  (Ammonite  perarmatus)  exhibits  a  double  row 
of  prominent  cones,  that  run  along  the  spiral  windings, 
and  give  to  it  the  appearance  of  an  Ionic  volute  inge- 
niously rusticated  ;  and  another  Ammonite,  that  takes  its 
name  from  the  quarry  (Ammonite  JBraamburiensis)^  pre- 
sents on  its  smooth,  broad  surface,  —  for  in  form  it  resem- 
bles some  of  our  recent  nautili,  —  the  gracefully-involved 
lines  of  the  internal  partitioning,  as  sharp  and  distinct  as 
if  traced  on  copper  by  the  burin.  The  traveller  explores 
and  examines,  and  finds  the  rude  excavation  on  the  hill- 
side converted  into  the  studio  of  some  wonderful  sculptor. 
In  the  quarry  opened  on  the  other  eminence  there  are 
similar  appearances  presented,  but  the  stone  is  softer,  and 
the  impressions  less  sharp. 

GLACIERS  AND  MORAINES  OF  SUTHERLAND. 

Let  vis  mark  the  abrupt  and  imposing  character  of  the 
hills.  They  rise  dark,  lofty,  and  bare,  and  show  —  to  em- 
ploy a  graphic  Highland  phrase  —  their  bones  sticking 
through  the  skin.  They  must  have  been  well  swept, 
surely ;  and  as  they  are  composed  mainly  of  Old  Red 
Sandstone  conglomerate  in  this  locality,  —  for  we  have  left 


320  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

behind  us  the  granitic  hills  of  Navidale  and  Loth,  —  their 
sweepings,  could  we  but  find  them,  would  have,  doubtless, 
a  well-marked  character.  And  now  let  us  turn  to  appear- 
ances of  another  kind.  We  stand  on  the  polished  surface 
of  the  rock,  with  its  rectilinear  grooves  and  scratches,  and, 
when  we  look  upwards  along  the  lines,  see  the  mountains 
and  the  valley ;  but  what  see  we  when  we  look  downwards 
along  the  lines?  Something  exceedingly  curious  indeed; 
—  double  and  triple  ranges  of  miniature  hills,  composed  of 
boulders  and  gravel,  the  veritable  conglomerate  sweepings 
of  the  mountain-slopes  and  the  valley,  mixed  with  sweep- 
ings of  the  more  distant  primary  hills  that  rise  behind. 
There  they  lie,  in  lines  that  preserve  such  a  rude  parallel- 
ism to  the  steep  range  from  which  they  were  originally 
scraped,  as  the  waves  that  rebound  from  a  seaward  barrier 
of  cliff  maintain  to  the  line  of  the  barrier.  Varying  from 
thirty  to  forty  feet  in  height,  and  steep  and  pyramidal,  in 
the  cross  section,  as  roofs  of  houses,  they  run  in  contin- 
uous undulating  lines  of  from  a  hundred  yards  to  half  a 
mile  in  length.  Three  such  lines,  with  their  intervening 
valleys,  occur  between  the  base  of  Braambury  Hill  and  the 
village  of  Brora,  like  inner,  outer,  and  middle  mounds  of 
circumvallation  in  an  ancient  hill-fort.  If  one  steadily 
rakes,  with  the  edge  of  one's  moist  palm,  the  scattered 
crumbs  on  a  polished  tea-table,  they  form,  of  course,  into 
irregular  lines,  presenting  in  the  transverse  section  a 
rudely  angular  form ;  and  in  the  direction  in  which  they 
have  been  swept,  the  moisture  from  the  palm  furrows  the 
mahogany  with  minute  streaks  of  dimness.  The  illustra- 
tion is  one  on  the  smallest  scale  possible.  But  if  the  palm 
be  tolerably  moist,  the  crumbs  tolerably  abundant,  and  the 
polish  of  the  mahogany  brought  brightly  out,  and  if  we 
rake  into  rude  parallelism  in  this  way,  line  after  line  from 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  321 

the  front  of  some  platter  or  bread-dish,  upturned  to  repre- 
sent the  line  of  hills,  we  shall  have  provided  ourselves  with 
no  very  inadequate  model  of  the  phenomena  of  Braam- 
bury.  But  what  palm  of  inconceivable  weight,  breadth, 
and  strength,  could  have  been  employed  here  in  thus 
raking  the  debris  into  lines  of  hills  half  a  mile  in  length 
by  at  least  thirty  feet  in  height,  and  in  pressing  into 
smoothness,  as  it  passed,  the  asperities  of  the  solid  rocks 
below?  The  reader  has  already  anticipated  the  reply. 
We  have  before  us  indications  of  an  ancient  glacier,  the 
most  unequivocal  that  are  to  be  found,  perhaps,  anywhere 
in  the  kingdom :  there  is  not  a  condition  or  accompani- 
ment wanting.  I  have  had  my  doubts  regarding  glacial 
agency  in  Scotland;  but,  after  visiting  this  locality  a 
twelvemonth  ago,  I  found  doubt  impossible ;  and  I  would 
now  fain  recommend  the  skeptical  to  suspend  their  ulti- 
mate decision  on  the  point,  until  such  time  as  they  shall 
have  acquainted  themselves  with  the  grooved  and  polished 
rocks  of  Braambury,  and  the  parallel  moraines  that  stretch 
out  around  its  base. 

I  had  lacked  time,  during  my  visit  of  the  previous  sea- 
son, to  examine  the  moraines  that  lie  in  the  opening  of  the 
valley  higher  up,  and  now  set  out  to  explore  them.  The 
day  had  become  exceedingly  pleasant.  A  few  cottony- 
looking  wreaths  of  mist  still  mottled  the  hills,  and  the  sky 
overhead  was  still  laden  with  clouds ;  but  ever  and  anon 
the  sun  broke  out  in  hasty  glimpses,  that  went  flashing 
across  the  dark  moors,  now  lighting  up  some  bosky  recess 
or  abrupt  cliff,  now  casting  into  strong  prominence  some 
insulated  moraine.  The  hollow  between  Braambury  and 
the  hills  is  occupied,  as  I  have  said,  by  an  extensive  mo- 
rass, in  which  the  inhabitants  of  the  neighborhood  dig 
their  winter  fuel,  and  which  we  find  fretted,  in  conse- 


322  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

quence,  by  numerous  rectilinear  cavities,  filled  with  an  inky 
water,  and  roughened  and  darkened  on  its  drier  swellings 
with  innumerable  parallelograms  of  peat.  I  passed  an 
opening  in  which  there  were  no  fewer  than  five  gnarled, 
short-stemmed  fir-trees,  laid  bare.  They  lay  clustered  to- 
gether, as  if  uprooted  and  thrown  down  by  some  tremen- 
dous hurricane,  —  presenting  exactly  such  appearances  as 
I  have  seen  in  the  woods  of  Cromarty  after  the  hurricane 
of  November  1830,  when,  in  less  than  an  hour,  three  thou- 
sand full-grown  trees  were  blown  down  in  one  not  very 
extensive  wood,  and  lay  heaped  on  some  of  the  more  ex- 
posed eminences  in  groups  of  six  and  eight.  A  few  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  prostrate  trees  there  rises,  amid  the 
morass,  a  solitary  moraine.  I  could  see  its  gravelly  root 
extending  downwards  under  the  peat,  which,  in  the  slow 
course  of  ages,  had  accumulated  around  it,  and  found  the 
conviction  pressing  upon  me,  that,  many  centuries  ago, 
when  the  five  prostrate  pines  were  living  denizens  of  the 
forest,  and  the  moss  which  now  enveloped  them  had  not 
formed,  this  insulated  hill  must  have  raised  its  heathy 
ridge  over  the  trees,  and  borne  the  marks  of  an  antiquity 
apparently  not  less  remote  than  those  which  it  bears  now. 
And  then,  long  ere  the  hill  itself  had  formed,  the  same  re- 
mark must  have  applied,  with  at  least  equal  force,  to  the 
Oolitic  rock  below.  We  see  that,  when  overlaid  by  the 
ponderous  ice,  it  must  have  been  exactly  the  same  sort  of 
hard,  brittle  sandstone  it  is  at  the  present  moment.  As 
shown  by  the  slim  partitionings  that  divide  internally  its 
casts  of  Belemnites,  it  must  have  hardened  ere  its  fossils 
were  absorbed  ;  and,  as  shown  by  its  polished  and  striated 
surfaces,  its  fossils  must  have  been  absorbed  ere  the  glacier 
slid  over  it.  "We  see  laid  bare  in  the  lines  of  the  striae,  the 
casts  of  Gryphites,  Pectens,  and  Terebratula;  we  see, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  323 

further,  that  the  hollows  which  they  formed  were  weak 
places  in  the  stone,  and  that  the  ice,  breaking  through,  had 
crushed  into  them  the  minute  fragments  of  which  their 
roofs  had  been  composed ;  and  so  infer,  from  the  appear- 
ances, that  the  newer  Oolite  of  Sutherland  must  have  been 
as  firm  a  building-stone  in  the  ages  of  the  glaciers  as  it  is 
now. 

As  we  approach  the  valley  of  the  Brora,  we  see  a  long, 
well-marked  moraine  sweeping  in  a  curved  line  along  the 
base  of  the  hill  that  forms  its  northern  boundary  of  en- 
trance, and  are  again  reminded,  by  the  general  parallelism 
of  moraine  and  hill,  of  the  reversed  wave  thrown  back  from 
a  barrier  of  rock.  In  the  gorge  of  the  valley,  immediately 
below  where  the  river  expands  into  a  fine  wild  lake,  we 
find  the  moraines  very  abundant,  but  preserving  no  regu- 
larity of  line.  They  exist  as  a  broken,  cockling  sea  of 
miniature  hills ;  and,  to  follow  up  the  twice-used  illustra- 
tion, remind  one  of  rebounding  waves  at  the  opening  of  a 
rocky  bay,  where  the  lines  meet  and  cross,  and  break  one 
another  into  fragments.  Like  many  of  the  other  moraines 
of  the  Highlands,  they  were  of  mark  enough  to  attract  the 
notice  of  the  old  imaginative  Celtaa,  who  called  them  Tom- 
hans,  and  believed  them  to  be  haunts  of  the  fairies, — dom- 
iciles whose  enchanted  places  of  entrance  might  be  discov- 
ered on  just  one  night  of  the  year,  but  which  no  man,  not 
desirous  of  becoming  a  denizen  of  fairyland,  would  do  well 
to  enter.  The  lake  above  is  a  fine,  lonely  sheet  of  water, 
fringed  with  birch,  and  overlooked  by  many  a  green,  unin- 
habited spot,  dimly  barred  by  the  plough.  A  range  of 
stern,  solemn-looking  hills  rise  steep  and  precipitous  on 
either  hand ;  while  a  single  picturesque  hill,  with  abrupt 
sides  and  a  tabular  summit,  terminates  the  upward  vista 
some  six  or  eight  miles  away.  I  saw  in  one  reedy  bay  a 


324  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES    FROM 

whole  community  of  water-lilies  opening  their  broad  white 
petals  and  golden  stamens  to  the  light ;  and,  wishing  to 
possess  myself  of  one  that  grew  nearer  the  shore  than  any 
of  the  others,  and  having  no  such  companion  as  Cowper's 
dog  Beau  to  bring  it  me,  I  cut  a  long  switch  of  birch,  and 
struck  sharply  at  the  stem,  that  I  might  decapitate  it,  and 
then  steer  it  to  land.  But  the  blow,  though  repeated  and 
re-repeated,  fell  short ;  and  I  had  drawn  my  last,  when  up 
there  started  from  the  bottom  a  splendid  lily,  tAvo-thirds 
developed,  —  a  true  Venus,  that,  rising  from  the  water, 
looked  up  to  the  light,  neck-deep,  with  the  rest.  The  agi- 
tation occasioned  by  the  strokes  had  burst  the  calix,  and, 
true  to  its  nature,  up  the  prematurely-liberated  flower  had 
sprung.  The  image  which  the  incident  furnished  mingled 
curiously  with  my  attempted  restorations  of  the  ancient 
state  of  the  valley.  The  delicate  lily,  rising  to  the  surface 
in  its  quiet,  sheltered  bay,  during  a  bright  glimpse  of  sun- 
shine, formed  an  interesting  point  of  contrast  to  what 
seemed  a  vast  foaming  river  of  ice,  that  rose  on  the  hill- 
sides more  than  half  their  height,  and  swept  downwards, 
till  where  it  terminated  in  the  plain,  in  an  abrupt  moving 
precipice,  that  ploughed  before  it,  in  its  irresistible  march, 
huge  hills  of  gravel  and  stone. 
• 

LEVEL  STEPPES  OF  KUSSIA,  AND  THEORY  OF  MORAINES. 

In  the  level  steppes  of  Russia,  where  the  traveller  may 
journey  without  seeing  a  hill  for  weeks  together,  the  rocks 
have  their  grooved  and  polished  surfaces.  And  even  in 
localities  where  there  are  hills,  the  hills  not  unfrequently 
merely  add  to  the  difficulty.  The  lofty  top  of  Schehallien, 
for  instance,  is  grooved  and  polished ;  and,  pray,  from  what 
neighboring  eminence  could  the  glacier  have  descended  on 
it?  Extreme,  however,  as  the  difficulties  that  environ  the 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  325 

phenomena  may  seem,  they  have  been  manfully  met  by 
Agassiz,  and  dealt  with  in  a  style  in  which  only  a  man  of 
genius  could  have  dealt  with  anything.  And  if  difficulties 
still  attend  his  theory,  there  are  at  least  other  difficulties 
which  it  ingeniously  obviates ;  and  it  seems  but  right,  at 
all  events,  to  give  it  generous  entertainment  and  a  fjiir 
trial,  until  such  time  as  it  may  be  found  untenable,  or  until 
at  least  something  better  turns  up  to  set  in  its  place. 

The  flat  steppes  of  Russia  have,  I  have  said,  their  groov- 
ings  and  polishings  :  they  have  also  their  moraine ;  and  so 
enormous  is  the  extent  of  the  latter,  that  for  week  after 
week  the  traveller  may  find  it  stretching  through  the  cen- 
tral wilds  of  the  empire,  on  and  on,  without  apparent  ter- 
mination, by  North  Novogorod  towards  Pinsk,  as  far  as 
the  confines  of  Silesia.  It  exists  as  a  broad  belt  of  erratic 
blocks,  mingled  with  heaps  of  gravel,  and  resembles,  from 
its  linear  continuity,  the  scattered  remains  of  some  such 
vast  wall  as  that  which  protected  of  old  the  Chinese  fron- 
tier from  the  Tartar.  And  here,  says  Agassiz,  is  the  mo- 
raine of  a  glacier  that  had  for  its  centre  no  group  of  local 
eminences,  no  vanished  Alps  of  the  Frozen  Ocean,  but  the 
North  Pole  itself.  The  ice  of  the  Southern  Pole  advances 
as  far.  Could  we  but  reverse  the  conditions  of  the  two 
poles,  the  northern  icy  barrier  would  extend  to  the  English 
Channel,  and  the  whole  British  islands  would  lie  enveloped 
in  one  vast  glacial  winding-sheet,  that,  overlying  the  sum- 
mits of  our  hills,  would  furrow  with  its  parallel  striae  even 
the  granitic  top  of  Schehallien. 

A  complete  reversal  of  the  conditions  of  the  two  poles 
would  account,  doubtless,  for  many  of  the  phenomena 
existing  in  connection  with  the  boulder-clay,  which  seem 
otherwise  so  inexplicable.  But  is  the  reversal  itself  pos- 
sible ?  A  Laplace  or  Lagrange  could  perhaps  answer  the 

28 


326  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

question.  This  much,  however,  men  of  lower  attainments 
may  know,  —  that  the  meteorological  condition  of  the 
two  poles  are  very  different,  —  the  icy  barrier  advancing, 
in  the  case  of  the  one,  many  degrees  nearer  the  equator 
than  it  does  in  the  case  of  the  other ;  that  their  astronom- 
ical condition  is  also  very  different,  the  sun  being  many 
millions  of  miles  nearer  the  one  in  winter,  and  nearer  the 
other  in  summer.  It  may  be  known,  further,  that  these 
astronomical  conditions  are  in  a  state  of  gradual  change ; 
that,  so  far  at  least,  as  human  observation  extends,  the 
change  has  been  steadily  progressing  in  one  direction  ; 
that,  should  it  but  continue,  a  time  must  inevitably  arrive 
when  their  astronomical  circumstances  shall  be  wholly  re- 
versed, —  a  time  when  the  sun  shall  look  down  upon  our 
northern  hemisphere  in  aphelion  in  winter,  and  in  perihe- 
lion in  summer.  True,  we  do  not  yet  know  that  the  me- 
teorological differences  of  the  poles  depend  on  their  astro- 
nomical differences,  or  whether  the  gradual  diminution  in 
the  eccentricity  of  the  earth's  orbit,  which  has  been  lessen- 
ing these  latter  differences  ever  since  astronomers  regis- 
tered their  observations,  may  not  be  like  the  change  in  the 
ecliptic,  —  the  result  of  mere  oscillation,  limited  to  a  few 
degrees. 

Let  us,  however,  conclude  the  case  to  be  otherwise :  let 
us  deem  the  oscillations  in  the  earth's  orbit  to  be  so  great 
as  to  involve  an  alternate  progress  in  the  sun,  between  his 
two  foci;  let  us  further  infer  a  dependence  between  his 
place  in  each  and  the  meteorological  condition  of  the 
poles.  We  stand,  let  us  suppose,  on  the  summit  of  a  hill ; 
but,  as  if  an  immense  wedge  had  been  thrust  between  our 
feet  and  the  soil,  we  rise  to  a  higher  elevation  on  an  in- 
clined plane  of  ice,  and  look  over  a  frozen  continent, 
enlivened  by  no  winding  arms  of  the  sea,  and  bounded 
by  no  shore.  In  the  words  of  Coleridge, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  327 

"  The  ice  is  here ;  the  ice  is  there ; 

The  ice  is  all  around ; 

It  cracks,  and  growls,  and  roars,  and  howls, 
A  wild  and  ceaseless  sound." 

It  is  summer;  and  the  sun,  in  perihelion,  looks  down  with 
intense  glare  on  the  rugged  surface.  There  is  a  ceaseless 
dash  of  streams  that  come  leaping  from  the  more  exposed 
ridges,  as  they  shrink  and  lessen  in  the  heat,  or  patter  from 
the  sunlit  pinnacles,  like  rain  from  the  eaves  of  a  roof  in  a 
thunder-shower.  They  disappear  in  cracks  and  fissures; 
and  we  may  hear  the  sound,  rising  from  where  they  break 
themselves,  far  beneath,  in  chill  caverns  and  gloomy  re- 
cesses, where,  even  at  this  season,  at  noon,  the  tempera- 
ture rises  but  little  above  the  freezing-point,  and  sinks  far 
beneath  it  every  evening  as  the  sun  declines.  The  night 
shall  scarce  have  come  on  when  all  these  water-courses 
shall  be  bound  up  by  the  frost,  and  the  melted  accumula- 
tions which  they  precipitated  into  the  fissures  beneath 
shall  be  converted  into  expansive  wedges  of  ice,  under  the 
influence  of  which  the  whole  ice-continent  shall  be  moving 
slowly  onwards  over  the  buried  land.  Millions  of  millions 
of  wedges  shall  ply  their  work  during  the  night  on  every 
square  mile  of  surface,  and  the  coming  day  shall  prepare 
its  millions  of  millions  more.  There  is  thus  a  slow  but 
steady  motion  induced  towards  the  open  space  where  the 
huge  glacier  terminates ;  the  rocks  far  below  grind  down 
into  a  clayey  paste,  as  the  ponderous  mass  goes  crushing 
over  them,  —  deliberate,  when  at  its  quickest,  as  the  hour- 
hand  of  a  time-piece,  —  and  vast  fragments  are  borne  away 
from  submerged  peaks  and  precipices  by  the  enclasping 
solid,  just  as  ordinary  streams  bear  along  their  fragments 
of  rock  and  stone  from  the  banks  and  ridges  that  lie  most 


328  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES    FROM 

exposed  to  the  sweep  of  their  currents.  All  around,  ac- 
cording to  Milton, 

"  A  frozen  continent 
Lies  dark  and  wild,  beat  by  perpetual  storms." 

Not  a  peak  of  our  higher  hills  appears :  all  are  enveloped 
in  their  cerements  of  cold  and  death.  Even  along  the 
flanks  of  the  gigantic  Alps,  the  groovings  and  polishings 
rise,  says  Agnssiz,  to  an  elevation  of  nine  thousand  feet ; 
and  then,  and  not  before,  do  we  find  the  pinnacles  that 
overlooked  the  scene  standing  up  sharp  and  unworn.  If 
we  ask  a  varied  prospect,  we  must  remove  from  our  pres- 
ent stand,  to  where  Mont  Blanc  and  his  compeers  raise 
their  white  summits  over  the  line  of  the  horizon,  to  give 
earnest  of  a  buried  continent,  or  to  where  the  smoke  and 
fire  of  Hecla  ascends  amid  the  level  from  a  dripping  crater 
of  ice. 

CROMARTY. 

Cromarty,  —  my  own  especial  manor,  which  I  have  so 
often  beat  over,  but  not  yet  half  exhausted,  —  presents  to 
the  geologist  one  of  the  most  interesting  centres  of  explor- 
ation in  Scotland.  Does  he  wish  thoroughly  to  study  our 
Scotch  Lias,  Upper  and  Lower,  with  the  Oolitic  member 
which  immediately  overlies  it?  —  then  let  him  remove  to 
Cromarty,  and  study  it  there.  Is  he  solicitous  to  acquaint 
himself  with  the  fossils  of  the  Lower1  Old  Red  Sandstone 
in  that  state  of  finest  preservation  in  which  the  microscope 
finds  most  of  beauty  and  finish  in  them  ?  —  then  let  him 
by  all  means  settle  at  Cromarty.  Is  he  wishful  of  know- 
ing much  about  the  last  elevated  of  our  granitic  hill 

i  Now  ascertained  to  be  Middle. 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  329 

ranges,  —  a  range  newer,  apparently,  than  many  of  our 
south-country  traps?  —  let  him  not  hesitate  to  take  lodg- 
ings at  Cromarty.  Is  he  curious  regarding  our  boulder- 
clay  ?  —  let  him  set  himself  carefully  to  examine  the  splen- 
did sections  which  it  presents  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Cromarty.  Does  he  feel  aught  of  interest  in  our  raised 
beaches  ?  —  then  let  him  come  and  live  upon  one  at  Cro- 
marty. Is  he  desirous  of  furnishing  himself  with  a  key 
to  the  geology  of  the  north  of  Scotland  generally?  —  in 
no  place  will  he  be  able  to  possess  himself  of  so  complete 
a  key  as  among  the  upturned  strata  of  Cromarty.  Had 
he  to  grope  his  way  along  a  course  of  discovery,  he  might 
find  the  district  yielding  up  its  more  interesting  phenom- 
ena but  slowly.  To  know  its  Lias  deposits  thoroughly 
would  be  a  work  of  months,  and  to  know  its  Old  Red 
Sandstone,  a  work  of  years ;  but  with  some  intelligent 
guide  to  point  out  to  him  the  localities  to  which  his  atten- 
tion should  be  directed,  and  all  in  them  that  has  been 
done  and  observed  already,  he  would  find  that  much 
might  be  accomplished  in  the  course  of  a  single  week,  — 
especially  in  the  long  calm  days  of  July,  when  the  more 
exposed  shores  of  the  district,  with  all  their  insulated 
stacks  and  ledges,  and  all  their  deep-sea  caves,  may  be 
explored  by  boat. 


CAVES    OF   CROMARTY,    OR   THE   ART   OF    SEEING   OVER  THE 
ART  OF  THEORIZING. 


We  swept  ownwards  through  the  noble  opening  of 
the  Cromarty  Frith,  and  landed  under  the  southern  Sutor, 
on  a  piece  of  rocky  beach,  overhung  by  a  gloomy  semi- 
circular range  of  precipices.  The  terminal  points  of  the 
range  stand  so  far  out  into  the  sea,  as  to  render  inacces- 

28* 


330  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

sible,  save  by  boat,  or  at  the  fall  of  ebb  in  stream  tides, 
the  piece  of  crescent-shaped  beach  within.  Each  of  the 
two  promontories  is  occupied  by  a  cave  in  which  the  sea 
at  flood  stands  some  ten  or  twelve  feet  over  the  gravel 
bottom,  and  there  are  three  other  caves  in  the  semicircle, 
into  which  the  tide  has  not  entered  since  it  fell  back  from 
the  old  coast  line.  The  larger  and  deeper  of  the  three 
caves  in  the  semicircular  inflection  is  mainly  that  which 
we  had  landed  to  explore.  It  runs  a  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  into  the  granitic  rock,  in  the  line  of  a  fault  that  seems 
first  to  have  opened  some  eight  or  ten  feet,  and  then,  lean- 
ing  back,  to  have  closed  its  sides  atop,  forming  in  this  way 
a  long  angular  hollow.  It  has  borne  for  centuries  the 
name  of  the  Doo-cot,  i.  e.  Dove-cot,  Cave,  and  has  been 
from  time  immemorial  a  haunt  of  pigeons.  We  approach 
the  opening.  There  is  a  rank  vegetation  springing  up  in 
front,  where  the  precipice  beetles  over,  and  a  small  stream 
comes  pattering  in  detached  drops  like  those  of  a  thunder- 
shower;  and  we  see  luxuriating  under  it,  in  vast  abun- 
dance, the  hot,  bitter,  fleshy-leaved  scurvy-grass,  of  which 
Cook  made  such  large  use,  in  his  voyages,  as  an  anti-scor- 
butic. The  floor  is  damp  and  mouldy ;  the  green  ropy 
sides,  which  rise  some  five-and-twenty  feet  ere  they  close, 
are  thickly  furrowed  by  ridges  of  stalactites,  that  become 
purer  and  whiter  as  we  retire  from  the  light  and  the  vege- 
tative influences,  and  present  in  the  deeper  recesses  of  the 
cave  the  hue  of  statuary  marble.  The  last  vegetable  that 
appears  is  a  minute  delicate  moss,  about  half  an  inch  in 
length,  which  slants  outwards  to  the  light  on  the  promi- 
nence of  the  sides,  and  overlies  myriads  of  similar  sprigs 
of  moss,  long  since  converted  into  stone,  but  which,  faith- 
ful in  death  to  the  ruling  law  of  their  lives,  still  point,  like 
the  others,  to  the  free  air  and  sunshine.  As  we  step  on- 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  331 

wards,  we  exchange  the  brightness  of  noon  for  the  mel- 
lower light  of  evening.  A  few  steps  farther,  and  evening 
has  deepened  into  twilight.  We  still  advance :  and  twi- 
light gives  place  to  a  gloom  dusky  as  that  of  midnight. 
We  grope  on,  till  the  rock  closes  before  us ;  and,  turning 
round,  see  the  blue  waves  of  the  frith  through  the  long, 
dark  vista,  as  if  we  viewed  them  through  the  tube  of  some 
immense  telescope.  We  strike  a  light.  The  roof  and 
sides  are  crusted  with  white  stalactites,  that  depend  from 
the  one  like  icicles  from  the  eaves  of  a  roof  in  a  severe 
frost,  and  stand  out  from  the  other  in  pure,  semi-transpar- 
ent ridges,  that  resemble  the  folds  of  a  piece  of  white 
drapery  dropped  from  the  roof;  while  the  floor  below  has 
its  rough  pavement  of  stalagmite,  that  stands  up,  wherever 
the  drops  descend,  in  rounded  prominences,  like  the  bases 
of  columns.  The  marvel  has  become  somewhat  old-fash- 
ioned since  the  days  when  Buchanan  described  the  drop- 
ping cave  of  Slains,  —  "  where  the  water,  as  it  descends 
drop  by  drop,  is  converted  into  pyramids  of  stone," — as 
one  of  the  wonders  of  Scotland,  and  deemed  it  necessary 
to  strengthen  the  credibility  of  his  statement  by  adding, 
that  he  had  been  "informed  by  persons  of  undoubted 
veracity  that  there  existed  a  similar  cave  among  the  Pyr- 
enees." Here,  however,  is  a  puzzle  to  exercise  our  ingenuity. 
Some  of  the  minuter  stalactites  of  the  roof,  after  descend- 
ing perpendicularly,  or  at  least  nearly  so,  for  a  few  inches, 
turn  up  again,  and  form  a  hook,  to  which  one  may  sus- 
pend one's  watch  by  the  ring ;  while  there  are  others  that 
form  a  loop,  attached  to  the  roof  at  both  ends.  Pray,  how 
could  the  descending  drop  have  returned  upwards  to  form 
the  hook,  or  what  attractive  power  could  have  drawn  two 
drops  together,  to  compose  the  eliptical  curve  of  the  loop  ? 
The  problem  is  not  quite  a  simple  one.  It  is  sufficiently 


332  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

hard  at  least,  as  it  has  to  deal  with  only  half-ounces  of 
rock,  to  inculcate  caution  on  the  theorists  who  profess  to 
deal  with  whole  continents  of  similar  material.  Let  us 
examine  somewhat  narrowly.  Dark  as  the  recess  is,  and 
though  vegetation  fails  full  fifty  feet  nearer  the  entrance 
than  where  we  now  stand,  the  place  is  not  without  its 
inhabitants.  We  see  among  the  dewy  damps  of  the  roof 
the  glistening  threads  of  some  minute  spider,  stretching 
in  lines  or  depending  in  loops.  And  just  look  here.  Along 
this  loop  there  runs  a  single  drop.  Observe  how  it  de- 
scends, with  but  a  slight  inclination,  for  about  two  inches 
or  so,  and  then  turns  round  for  about  three  quarters  of  an 
inch  more;  observe  further,  that  along  this  other  loop 
there  trickle  two  drops,  one  on  each  side ;  that,  as  a  conse- 
quence of  the  balance  which  they  form  the  one  against  the 
other,  their  descent  has  a  much  greater  sweep ;  and  that, 
uniting  in  the  centre,  they  fall  together.  We  have  found 
a  solution  of  our  riddle,  and  received  one  proof  more  of 
the  superiority  of  the  simple  art  of  seeing  over  the  ingen- 
ious art  of  theorizing. 

But  let  us  proceed  to  the  proper  business  of  the  excur- 
sion. We  have  provided  ourselves  with  tools  for  digging; 
and,  selecting  a  spot  some  thirty  feet  within  the  cavern, 
where  the  bottom  seems  composed  of  a  damp  dark  mould, 
we  set  ourselves,  with  spade  and  pick-axe,  to  penetrate 
to  the  sea-gravel  beneath.  The  soil  yields  as  easily  to  the 
tool  as  a  piece  of  garden  mould ;  and,  turning  it  up  to  the 
light  in  cubical  adhesive  masses,  we  find  it  consisting  of 
an  impalpable  brown  earth,  that  exactly  resembles  raw 
umber.  We  have  fallen  on  a  bed  of  pure  guano,  not 
quite  so  rich,  perhaps,  as  that  which  our  agriculturists 
export  from  the  rocky  islets  of  South  America,  at  the  rate 
of  about  fourteen  pounds  per  ton,  for  it  must  have  been 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  333 

formed  originally  of  vegetable,  not  animal  matter,  and  we 
find  that  it  lacks  the  strong  ammonical  smell  of  the  guano 
produced  by  predacious  water-birds ;  but,  judging  from 
its  appearance,  and  from  the  high  estimate  formed  of  old 
of  the  dung  of  pigeons  as  a  manure,  it  must  be  of  value 
enough  to  deserve  removal  from  the  damp  unproductive 
floor  of  the  Doo-cot.  We  find  the  bed  which  it  com- 
poses extending  downwards  from  two  to  three  feet,  and 
filling  the  cavern  from  side  to  side.  A  rock-gravel  lies 
below,  hardened  into  an  imperfect  breccia  by  a  ferrugin- 
ous cement;  but  the  rotting  moisture  exuded  from  the 
guano  has  been  unfavorable,  apparently,  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  shells,  and  we  find  that  it  contains  nothing 
organic.  We  again  remove  to  the  inner  recesses  of  the 
cave.  Mark  first,  that  peculiar  appearance  along  the  sides. 
There  stands  out,  at  the  height  of  about  four  feet  from 
the  present  floor,  what  seems  a  rude  projecting  cornice  of 
rock -gravel,  bound  together  by  the  stalactitical  cement : 
the  projection  at  one  point  somewhat  exceeds  eighteen 
inches ;  and  we  find  it  bearing  short-stemmed'  stalagmites 
atop,  just  like  the  rugged  pavement  below.  To  use  a 
homely  but  apt  illustration,  the  appearance  is  tha$  pre- 
sented by  the  lower  part  of  a  tallow-candle  that  had  been 
burning,  exposed  to  a  current  of  air,  with  its  grease  run- 
ning down  in  ridges  on  the  sides,  and  then  spreading  out 
on  the  margin  of  the  metal  socket,  when,  after  raising  it 
out  of  the  candlestick,  we  see  the  lower  accumulation  pro- 
jecting from  it  like  a  cornice.  That  line  of  projecting 
gravel  indicates  the  level  at  which  the  floor  of  the  cavern 
once  stood.  If  we  remove  the  looser  parts  of  the  present 
floor,  we  shall  find  its  place  indicated  by  just  a  similar  line 
of  projection.  The  loose  sea-gravel  could  have  adhered 
to  the  sides  only  by  having  formed  the  part  of  the  flopr  in 


334  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FKOM 

contact  with  them,  until  the  stalagmitical  substance  had 
taken  effect  upon  it,  by  binding  it  into  a  mass,  and  fixing 
it  where  it  had  lain.  Let  us  break  into  one  of  the  projec- 
tions. We  find  it  a  true  breccia,  thickly  interspersed  with 
such  fragments  of  shells  as  we  may  pick  up  by  hundreds 
in  the  neighboring  sea-caves,  where  the  incessant  beat  of 
the  surf  on  the  hard  rocks  against  which  it  dashes  breaks 
them  into  rounded  fragments.  There,  for  instance,  is  a 
massy  little  bit  of  the  strong  smooth  buckie,  (Fusus  An- 
tiquus),  the  largest  of  British  univalves ;  and  there  a  frag- 
ment equally  massy  of  the  Icelandic  Venus,  —  both  of 
them  productions  of  the  oceans,  and  of  such  rivers  as  the 
Friths  of  Cromarty  and  Dornoch.  The  materials  of  the 
projecting  cornice  are  those  of  a  cavern-beach  much  ex- 
posed to  the  roll  of  the  surf. 

Let  us  now  see  what  our  several  points  of  circumstan- 
tial evidence  amount  to.  First,  then,  the  bottom  of  the 
cave  must  have  stood  at  one  time  at  least  four  feet  over 
its  present  level,  and  at  least  fourteen  feet  over  the  level 
of  the  two  sea-caves  outside ;  and  yet,  just  as  the  sea  now 
covers  them,  must  the  sea  at  that  remote  period  have 
covered  it.  The  incessant  wave  must  have  resounded 
along  these  silent  walls  as  it  dashed  sullenly  onwards,  and 
awakened  all  their  echoes  with  its  harsh  rattle  as  it  rolled 
back.  The  cavern  at  that  early  time,  like  all  the  other 
deep-sea  caves  of  the  coast,  could  have  had  no  crust  of 
stalactites.  Its  sides  and  roof  must  have  been  as  dark  and 
bare  as  the  sides  and  roofs  of  the  caves  outside,  where  the 
spray  washes  away  every  film  of  calcareous  matter  ere  it 
has  been  deposited  for  half  a  day.  A  sudden  elevation 
of  the  coast  took  place,  and  sudden  it  must  have  been,  for 
the  loose  gravel  beach,  with  its  finely  comminuted  shells, 
was  at  once  raised  beyond  the  influence  of  the  tides ;  the 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  335 

stalactitical  ridges  began  to  form  on  the  walls,  and  the 
sea-gravel  to  consolidate  —  where  these  terminated  be- 
neath, and  the  petrifying  water  oozed  through  —  into  the 
brecciated  cornice.  But  the  waves  from  the  lower  line 
had  been  encroaching  inwards,  bit  by  bit,  from  the  cavern's 
mouth,  washing  down  the  floor  to  their  own  reduced  level, 
until  they  had  at  length  scooped  it  all  out,  and  left  but 
the  hardened  projections  to  mark  where  it  had  stood. 
The  cave,  though  now  occupied  by  only  the  higher  tides, 
had  again  become,  in  some  sort,  a  sea-cave,  when  a  second 
elevation  of  the  land  raised  it  to  its  present  level.  The 
covering  of  stalactites  thickened  along  its  sides ;  its  minute 
mosses  lived,  died,  and  became  marble ;  and,  as  age  suc- 
ceeded age,  the  dark  recesses  in  its  roof  were  cheered  by 
the  unerring  affections  of  instinct ;  and  brood  after  brood, 
reared  with  assiduous  labor  to  maturity,  went  forth,  some 
again  to  return  to  their  hereditary  cells,  some  to  take  up 
their  abodes  with  man.  I  need  scarce  say,  that  the  rock, 
or  white-backed  dove,  is  the  original  of  our  domestic 
species. 

LINE  OF  CROMARTY  SUTOR. 

We  find  that  there  leaned  against  one  of  the  precipices 
of  the  Southern  Sutor,  now  washed  by  the  spring  tides,  a 
talus  of  loose  debris,  such  as  we  see  still  leaning  against 
the  precipices  of  the  old  coast  line,  and  that  a  calcareous 
spring,  dropping  upon  it  from  an  upper  ledge,  had,  in  the 
course  of  years,  converted  its  apex  into  a  hard  breccia  and 
cemented  it  to  the  rock,  while  the  base  below  remained 
incoherent  as  at  first.  During  this  period  it  must  have 
lain  beyond  the  sweep  of  the  waves.  But  a  change  of 
level  took  place ;  the  waves  came  dashing  against  the 
loose  debris,  and  swept  it  away ;  and  all  that  now  remains 


336  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

of  the  talus  is  the  consolidated  apex,  projecting  about 
three  feet  from  the  rock.  Under  another  precipice  of  the 
Cromarty  Sutor  we  find  a  line  of  consolidated  debris  — 
which,  like  the  breccia  of  the  apex,  must  have  been  the 
work  of  a  calcareous  spring  —  running  out  about  fifty  feet 
into  the  ebb,  where  it  is  altogether  impossible  it  could 
have  formed  now.  The  spring  must  have  flowed  down- 
wards for  these  fifty  feet  ere  it  reached  the  sea;  for  no 
sooner  could  it  have  touched  the  latter  than  its  waters 
would  have  been  diffused  and  lost ;  and,  even  could  they 
have  avoided  such  diffusion,  the  waves  must  have  pre- 
vented the  loose  gravel  on  which  the  calcareous  matter 
acted  from  remaining  sufficiently  stationary  for  a  single 
tide.  In  each  of  these  cases  is  the  value  of  the  evidence 
enhanced  by  the  circumstances  in  which  it  is  given.  Both 
the  talus  and  the  brecciated  line  were  formed  on  a  basis 
of  gigantic  rock,  so  hard  that  it  strikes  fire  with  steel,  and 
which  only  a  general  change  of  level  could  have  let  down 
to  the  influence  of  the  tide,  or  elevated  over  it. 


LESSON  TO  YOUNG  GEOLOGISTS  FROM  CLAY-BED  OF  THE 
NORTHERN  SUTOR. 

There  is  a  stiff,  blue  clay  much  used  in  Cromarty  and  the 
neighborhood  for  rendering  the  bottom  of  ponds  water- 
tight, and  the  foundations  of  cellars  impervious  to  the 
land-springs,  and  which,  save  for  its  greater  tenacity,  much 
resembles  the  blue  boulder-clay  of  our  Coal  Measures.  It 
is  found  in  the  ebb  at  half-tide,  in  a  bed  varying  from 
eighteen  inches  to  three  feet  in  thickness,  which  overlies 
the  red  boulder-clay,  and  contains  minute  fragments  of 
shells,  too  much  broken  to  be  distinguished.  I  had  deemed 
it  a  sort  of  re-formation  from  strata  of  a  grayish-colored 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  337 

aluminous  shale,  which  occur  in  the  Old  Red  Sandstone, 
and  are  laid  bare  in  the  neighborhood  by  the  sea.  The 
waves  dash  against  them,  and  then  roll  back  turbid  with 
the  lighter  particles,  to  deposit  these  in  the  deep,  still 
water  outside.  But  in  the  place  at  present  occupied  by 
the  bed  the  waves  could  not  have  deposited  them ;  it  is  so 
much  exposed  to  the  surf,  that  the  deposit  is  gradually 
wearing  down  under  the  friction,  and  it  must  have  been 
formed,  therefore,  at  a  lower  level,  and  when  the  sea  beat 
against  the  ancient  beaches.  We  find  further  proof  that 
such  must  have  been  the  case  in  a  soft  stratum  of  gray, 
shaly  sandstone,  which  rises  through  the  bed,  and  which 
is  thickly  perforated  by  cells  of  the  Pholas  candiclus,  con- 
taining in  abundance  the  dead  shells,  but  which  has  been 
elevated  to  a  too  high  place  to  form  any  longer  a  fit  habitat 
for  the  living  animals.  I  had  often  examined  the  frag- 
mentary shells  of  this  clayey  layer,  in  the  hope  of  being 
able  to  elicit  from  them  somewhat  regarding  the  history 
of  a  deposit  older  than  our  present  coast  line,  yet  newer 
than  our  boulder-clay ;  but  I  had  hitherto  found  them  in 
every  case  too  comminuted  to  yield  the  necessary  evi- 
dence. I  now  succeeded,  however,  in  detecting  the  same 
deposit  under  the  Northern  Sutor,  in  the  same  close  neigh- 
borhood as  on  the  Cromarty  side  to  the  gray  aluminous 
shale  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  to  which  it  seems  to  have 
owed  its  origin,  and  abounding  in  organisms  marine  and 
terrestrial.  All  are  recent.  I  found  it  containing  cones 
of  our  common  Scotch  fir,  hazel-nuts,  fragments  of  aider 
and  oak,  shells  of  the  common  mussel  much  decomposed, 
and  shells,  too,  of  one  of  the  Gaper  family  (Myce  are- 
nan'rt),  still  lying  in  pairs.  The  blue,  adhesive  clay  in 
which  they  *are  embedded  can  scarce  be  distinguished 
from  that  of  the  Lower  Lias  of  Eathie;  the  sets  of  organ- 

29 


338  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

isms  in  the  two  deposits  are  also  the  same,  —  indicating 
that  their  deposition  must  have  taken  place  under  similar 
conditions.  The  Lias,  like  the  recent  clay,  has  its  cones, 
its  bits  of  wood,  and  its  marine  bivalves  lying  in  pairs ; 
and  the  sole  difference  that  obtains  between  them  is,  that 
while  the  cones,  and  wood,  and  bivalves  of  the  blue  clay 
are  all  existences  of  the  present  time,  the  cones,  and  wood, 
and  bivalves  of  the  Lias  represent  classes  of  organic  beings 
that  have  long  since  passed  into  extinction.  This  clay- 
bed  of  the  Northern  Sutor  is  one  of  the  best  places  I  know 
for  the  young  geologist  taking  his  first  lesson  upon.  I 
deemed  it  of  interest  chiefly  as  corroborative  of  the  fact 
that  our  raised  beaches  on  the  shores  of  the  Cromarty 
and  Moray  Friths  belong  to  exactly  the. present  state  of 
things ;  nay,  that  for  a  very  inconsiderable  period  ere 
their  elevation,  when  the  blue  bed  was  forming  in  com- 
paratively de'ep  water,  both  sea  and  land  were  stored  with 
their  existing  productions. 


GLACIAL  APPEARANCES  AT  NIGG  AND  LOGIE. 

There  are  two  several  localities  in  which,  after  acquaint- 
ing one's-self  with  the  glacial  moraines  of  Brora,  one  may 
examine  with  advantage  the  glacial  moraines  of  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Cromarty.  One  of  these  we  find  in  the  parish 
of  Logic,  not  a  hundred  yards  distant  from  the  great 
coach  road ;  the  other,  in  the  parish  of  Nigg,  on  one  of 
the  slopes  in  which  the  lofty  ridge,  whose  south-western 
termination  forms  the  northern  Sutor,  sinks  at  its  north- 
eastern boundary  into  the  plain  of  Easter  Ross.  The 
Logie  moraine  extends,  for  full  three-quarters  of  a  mile, 
in  a  line  parallel  to  the  mountain  range  from  which  its 
glacier  must  have  descended.  There  is  a  furzy  level  in 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  330 

front,  mottled  over  with  groups  of  cottages ;  the  moraine, 
—  thickly  planted  with  fir,  and  amid  whose  sheltering 
hollows  the  gipsies'  tent  may  be  seen  in  the  warmer 
months,  and  the  houseless  Free  Church  congregation  at 
this  inclement  season,  —  forms  a  long  undulating  ridge, 
in  what  a  painter  would  term  the  middle  ground  of  the 
landscape ;  while  on  the  swelling  acclivities  behind,  over 
which  the  icy  plane  must  have  once  extended,  we  see 
woods,  and  fields,  and  stately  manor-houses,  and,  high 
above  all,  the  heathy  mountain  ridge,  where  the  sky 
seems  resting  on  the  land.  I  have  not  seen  the  rock  laid 
bare  in  any  part  of  the  cultivated  tract  which  intervenes 
between  the  moraine  and  the  upland  ridge ;  but  I  enter- 
tain little  doubt  that  its  surface  will  be  found  to  bear  the 
characteristic  groovings  and  polishings  of  the  glacial  period. 
The  moraines  of  the  Hill  of  Nigg,  as  might  be  premised 
from  the  lower  elevation  and  narrower  slopes  of  the  em- 
inence from  which  their  glacier  descended,  are  of  small 
extent,  compared  with  the  moraine  of  Logie.  There  is, 
however,  one  of  the  number,  a  beautiful  grassy  Tomhan, 
fringed  at  the  base  with  its  thickets  of  dwarf-birch  and 
hazel,  that  was  deemed  commanding  enough  in  some 
early  age,  to  be  selected  as  the  site  of  a  hill-fort,  still 
known  to  tradition  as  the  Danish  camp,  and  whose  double 
mound  of  turf  we  may  still  see  encircling  the  summit.  It 
must  have  been  a  dreary  period  when  the  great  glacier  of 
Logie,  sloping  towards  the  south,  and  the  lesser  glacier 
of  the  hill  of  Nigg,  sloping  towards  the  north,  saw  them- 
selves reflected  in  the  separating  strait  of  sea  which  at 
this  remote  period  flowed  through  the  flat  valley  be- 
tween. The  valley  is  still  occupied  for  half  its  length  by 
a  sandy  estuary,  known  as  the  Sands  of  Nigg,  which,  ere 
the  upheaval  of  the  higher  beaches,  must  have  existed  as  a 


340  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

shallow  channel,  through  which  the  Frith  of  Cromarty  — 
then  a  double-mouthed  arm  of  the  sea,  with  the  hill  of 
Nigg  as  a  mountainous  island  in  the  midst  —  communi- 
cated with  the  Moray  Frith  beyond. 

PHENOMENA  EXPLANATORY  OF  ACCUMULATIONS  OF  SHELLS. 

There  are  scarce  any  of  the  appearances  with  which  the 
geologist  is  conversant  more  mysterious  than  the  immense 
accumulations  of  shells  which  he  occasionally  finds,  as  in 
some  parts  of  Sweden,  separated  from  all  extraneous  mat- 
ter, as  if  they  had  been  subjected  to  some  sifting  process, 
—  cleaned,  as  it  were,  and  laid  by ;  and  it  has  long  been 
a  question  with  him  how  this  sifting  process  had  been 
effected.  The  theory  that  the  accumulation  had  been 
heaped  up  by  great  floods,  through  which  substances  of 
the  same  specific  gravity  were  huddled  together,  has  been 
the  commonly  accepted  one;  but  who  ever  saw  a  flood, 
however  great,  that  did  not  cast  down  its  mud  and  its 
clay  among  its  transported  shells,  or  that  had  not  mingled 
them,  in  the  process  of  removal,  with  its  lighter  gravels  or 
its  sand?  In  the  flat  estuary  of  Nigg,  I  have  seen  the 
sifting  process  effected  through  a  simple  but  adequate 
agency.  For  about  two  miles  from  where  the  estuary 
opens  into  the  Cromarty  Frith,  its  wide  tracts  of  yielding 
sand  are  thickly  occupied  by  the  shells  that  love  such  lo- 
calities,—  in  especial,  by  the  common  cockle.  Almost 
every  tide,  when  the  animals  are  in  season,  furnishes  its 
vast  quantities  for  the  markets  of  the  neighboring  towns, 
and  still  the  supply  keeps  up  ample  as  at  first.  Now  the 
tracts  of  sand  which  they  inhabit,  if  not  properly  quick- 
sands, are  at  least  extremely  loose,  especially  when  cov- 
ered by  the  tide;  and  though  the  creatures  succeed,  so 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  341 

long  as  they  live,  in  maintaining  their  proper  place  in  them 
within  a  few  inches  of  the  surface,  no  sooner  do  they  die 
than  the  shells  begin  gradually  to  sink  downwards  through 
the  unsolid  mass,  till,  reaching,  at  the  depth  of  about  six 
feet,  a  firmer  stratum,  they  there  accumulate,  and  form  a 
continuous  bed.  The  work  of  accumulation  has  been  going 
on  for  many  centuries;  generation  after  generation  has 
been  dying,  to  undergo  this  process  of  burial,  —  this  pro- 
cess of  subarenaceous  deposition,  if  I  may  so  speak ;  and 
there  are  places  in  the  estuary  in  which  the  shelly  stratum 
has  risen  to  within  a  foot  or  two  of  the  surface.  It  forms 
a  sort  of  quarry  of  shells ;  and  when,  about  thirty  years 
ago,  there  was  a  lime-work  established  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, many  thousand  cartloads  were  dug  out  and  burnt 
into  lime.  I  had  frequent  occasion,  some  five  or  six  years 
since,  to  pass  through  the  estuary  at  seasons  when  the 
mere  amateur  would  have  perhaps  staid  at  home.  There 
runs  through  it  a  stream  of  fresh  water,  that  drains  the  flat 
fields  and  scattered  lochans  of  Easter  Ross ;  and  on  one 
of  my  winter  journeys,  after  a  sudden  thaw,  accompanied 
by  heavy  rains,  I  found  the  stream  swollen  to  the  size  of  a 
considerable  river,  and  its  bed  excavated  beneath  the  usual 
level  some  three  or  four  feet,  with  the  sectional  line  of 
sand  and  shells  through  which  it  had  cut  standing  up  over 
it  like  a  wall.  There  was  first,  reckoning  downwards,  from 
a  foot  to  eighteen  inches  of  pure  sand ;  and  next,  from  two 
feet  to  two  feet  and  a  half  of  dead  shells.  The  sandy 
tract  all  around,  for  many  hundred  acres  in  extent,  used 
to  be.partially  covered  with  water;  every  ^furrow  of  the 
ripples,  and  every  depression  of  the  surface,  borrowed  its 
full  from  the  receding  tide,  and',  from  the  general  flatness, 
retained  it  till  its  return.  But  on  this  occasion,  the  sur- 
face-water had  found  an  unwonted  drainage,  through  the 

29* 


342  DESCK1PTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

upright  sectional  front,  into  the  newly  excavated  bed  of 
the  stream.  It  sank  through  the  upper  arenaceous  layer 
as  through  a  filtering  stone,  and  then  came  rushing  through 
the  stratum  of  shells  underneath,  brown  with  the  sand 
which  it  swept  from  their  interstices.  Nor  could  there  be 
a  completer  sifting  process.  For  yards  and  roods  together 
the  shells  were  as  thoroughly  divested  of  the  sandy  ma- 
trix in  which  they  had  lain  as  if  they  had  been  carefully 
washed  in  a  sieve.  I  was  bold  enough  to  infer  from  the 
phenomenon  at  the  time,  that  the  problem  of  the  unmixed 
accumulation  of  shells  may  be,  in  at  least  some  cases,  not 
so  difficult  of  solution  as  has  been  hitherto  supposed.  One 
has  but  to  take  for  granted  conditions  such  as  those  of  the 
estuary  of  Nigg,  —  the  incoherent  bed,  half  a  quicksand, 
and  the  subarenaceous  deposition,  —  to  account  for  their 
original  production,  and  the  superadded  conditions  of  the 
surface-water  and  the  free  drainage,  to  account  for  their 
after  clearance  of  extraneous  matter. 

CAUTION  TO  GEOLOGISTS  ON  TUB  FINDING  OF  REMAINS. 

In  consolidated  slopes-  it  is  not  unusual  to  find  remains, 
animal  and  vegetable,  of  no  very  remote  antiquity.  I 
have  seen  a  human  skull  dug  out  of  the  reclining  base  of 
a  clay  bank,  once  a  precipice,  fully  six  feet  from  under  the 
surface.  It  might  have  been  deemed,  not  without  a  de- 
gree of  plausibility,  the  skull  of  some  long-lived  contem- 
porary of  Enoch,  — perchance  that  of  one  of  the  accursed 
race, 

"  Who  sinned  and  di<jd  before  the  avenging  flood." 

Nay,  a  fine  theory  was  in  the  act  of  being  formed  regard- 
ing it,  which  affected  the  whole  deposit;  but,  alas!  the 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  343 

laborer  dug  a  little  further,  and  struck  his  pickaxe  against 
an  old  Gothic  rybat,  that  lay  deeper  still.  There  could  be 
no  mistaking  the  character  of  the  champfered  edge  that 
still  bore  the  marks  of  the  tool,  nor  that  of  the  square  per- 
foration for  the  lock-bolt ;  and  the  rising  theory  straight- 
way stumbled  against  it  and  fell.  Both  rybat  and  skull 
had  come  from  an  ancient  burying-ground,  situated  on  a 
projecting  angle  of  the  table,  and  above. 

REMARKS  ON  UNDERLYING  CLAY  ON  LEVEL  MOORS. 

On  level  moors,  where  the  rain-water  stagnates  in  pools, 
and  a  thin  layer  of  mossy  soil  produces  a  scanty  ^covering 
of  heath,  we  find  the  underlying  clay  streaked  and  spotted 
with  patches  of  white.  As  in  the  spots  and  streaks  of  the 
Red  Sandstone  formations,  Old  and  New,  the  coloring 
matter  has  been  discharged  without  any  accompanying 
change  having  taken  place  in  the  mechanical  structure  of 
the  substance  which  it  pervaded;  for  we  find  the  same 
mixture  of  arenaceous  and  aluminous  particles  in  the  white 
as  in  the  red  portions.  And  the  stagnant  water  above, 
acidulated,  perhaps,  by  its  various  vegetable  solutions, 
seems  to  have  been  in  some  way  connected  with  these  ap- 
pearances. In  almost  every  case  in  which  a  crack  through 
the  clay  gives  access  to  the  oozing  moisture,  we  find  the 
sides  bleached,  for  several  feet  downwards,  to  nearly  the 
color  of  pipe-clay ;  we  find  the  surface,  too,  when  divested 
of  the  soil,  presenting  for  yards  together  the  appearance 
of  sheets  of  half-bleached  linen.  Now,  the  peculiar  chem- 
istry through*  which  these  changes  are  effected  might  be 
found  to  throw  much  light  on  similar  phenomena  in  the 
older  formations.  There  are  quarries  in  the  New  Red 
Sandstone  in  which  almost  eveiy  mass  of  stone  presents 


344  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES    FROM 

a  different  shade  of  color  from  that  of  its  neighboring 
mass,  and  quarries  in  the  Old  Red,  whose  strata  we  find 
streaked  and  spotted  like  pieces  of  calico.  And  their 
variegated  aspect  seems  to  have  been  communicated  in 
every  instance,  not  during  deposition,  nor  after  they  had 
been  hardened  into  stone,  but  when,  like  the  boulder-clay, 
they  had  existed  in  an  intermediate  state. 

TRAVELLED  BOULDERS  NOT  ASSOCIATED  WITH  CLAY. 

All  the  travelled  boulders  of  the  north  do  not  seem  asso- 
ciated with  the  clay.  We  find  them  occurring,  in  some  in- 
stances, in  an  overlying  gravel,  and  in  some  instances  rest- 
ing at  high  levels  on  the  bare  rock.  I  have  seen,  on  the 
hill  of  Fyrish,  —  a  lofty  eminence  of  the  Lower  Old  Red 
which  overlooks  the  upper  part  of  the  Cromarty  Frith, —  a 
boulder  of  an  exceedingly  beautiful,  sparkling  hornblende, 
reposing  on  a  stratum  of  yellow  sandstone,  fully  a  thousand 
feet  over  the  sea,  where  there  is  not  a  particle  of  the  clay 
in  sight.  We  find  these -travellers  furnishing  specimens  of. 
almost  all  the  primary  rocks  of  the  country,  —  its  gneisses, 
schistose  and  granitic,  its  granites,  red,  white,  and  gray, 
its  hornblendic  and  micaceous  schists,  and  occasionally, 
though  more  rarely,  its  traps.  The  stone  most  abundant 
among  them,  and  which  is  found  occurring  in  the  largest 
masses,  is  a  well-marked  granitic  gneiss,  in  which  the 
quartz  is  white,  and  the  feldspar  of  a  pink  color,  and  in 
which  the  mica,  intensely  black,  exists  in  oblong  accumu- 
lations, ranged  along  the  line  of  stratification  in  inter- 
rupted layers.  No  rock  of  the  same  kind  is  to  be  found 
in  situ  nearer  than  thirty  miles.  We  find  granitic  boul- 
ders of  vast  size  abundant  in  the  neighborhood  of  Tain, 
especially  where  the  coach-road  passes  towards  the  west 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  345 

through  a  piece  of  barren  moor,  and  on  the  range  of  sea- 
beach  below.  One  enormous  block,  of  a  form  somewhat 
approaching  the  cubical,  is  large  enough,  and  seems  solid 
enough,  to  admit  of  being  hewn  into  the  pedestal  of  some 
colossal  statue ;  but  instead  of  being  thus  appropriated  to 
form  part  of  a  monument,  it  has  lately  been  converted  of 
itself  into  a  -whole  monument.  When  I  last  passed  the 
way,  I  found  it  dedicated,  in  an  inscription  of  nine-inch 
letters,  "  to  the  memory  of  the  immortal  Scott."  Nature 
had  dedicated  it  to  the  memory  of  one  of  her  great  revo- 
lutions ages  before;  but  since  the  dedicator  had  deter- 
mined on  adding,  in  Highland  fashion,  a  stone  to  the  cairn 
of  Sir  Walter,  it  would  certainly  have  been  no  easy  mat- 
ter to  have  added  to  it  a  nobler  one. 

GRANITIC  GNEISS   AND   SANDSTONE,  WITH   THE  CONDITIONS  OF 
THEIR  UPHEAVAL. 

On  entering  on  the  granitic  rock,  we  find  the  strata, 
strangely  disturbed  and  contorted,  lying,  in  the  course  of 
a  few  yards,  in  almost  every  angle,  and  dipping  in  almost 
every  direction.  And  not  only  must  there  have  been  a 
complexity  of  character  in  the  disturbing  forces,  but  the 
rock  on  which  they  acted  must  have  been  singularly  sus- 
ceptible of  being  disturbed.  The  strata  of  the  sandstone 
were,  at  the  period  of  their  upheaval,  the  same  brittle, 
rigid  plates  of  solid  stone  that  they  are  now.  The  strata 
of  the  granitic  gneiss  were  characterized,  on  the  contrary, 
during  their  earlier  periods  of  disturbance,  by  a  yielding 
flexibility.  They  were  capable  of  being  bent  into  ^harp 
angles  without  breaking.  We  see  them  running  in  zig- 
zag lines  along  the  precipices,  now  striking  downwards, 
now  ascending  upwards,  now  curved,  like  a  relaxed  Indian 
bow,  in  one  direction,  now  curved  in  a  contrary  one,  like 


346  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

the  same  bow  when  fully  bent.  The  strata  of  the  sand- 
stone, like  a  pile  of  glass-panes  laid  parallel,  existed  in  a 
state  in  which  they  could  be  either  raised  in  any  given 
angle,  or,  if  the  acting  forces  were  violent  and  partial, 
broken  up  and  shivered;  whereas  the  granitic  strata  ex- 
isted in  the  state  of  the  same  glass-panes  brought  to  a 
blight  red  heat,  and  capable,  from  their  extreme  flexi- 
bility, of  being  bent  and  twisted  in  any  direction.  We 
find,  too,  that  there  occur  occasional  patches  in  which  the 
lines  of  the  stratification  have  been  together  obliterated. 
We  can  trace  the  strata  with  much  distinctness  on  every 
side  of  these ;  but  there  is  a  gradual  obscuration  of  the 
lines,  and  we  see  what  was  a  granitic  gneiss  in  one  square 
yard  of  rock  existing  as  a  compact  homogeneous  mass  in 
the  next.  The  effect  is  exactly  that  which  would  be  pro- 
duced in  the  heated  panes  of  my  illustration,  were  the 
heat  kept  up  until  portions  of  them  began  to  run ;  and 
the  circumstance  serves  to  throw  light  on  some  of  the 
other  phenomena  of  the  gneiss.  The  stone,  in  its  average 
specimens,  is  a  ternary,  consisting  of  red  feldspar,  white 
quartz,  and  a  dingy-colored  mica;  but  no  one,  notwith- 
standing, could  mistake  it  for  a  true  granite.  It  has  its 
granite  veins,  however;  and  these  veins,  truly  such  in 
some  cases,  are,  in  not  a  few  others,  mere  strata  of  the 
gneiss,  which  have  evidently  been  formed  into  granite 
where  they  lie.  There  are  no  marks  of  injection,  —  no 
accompanying  disturbance.  All  their  conditions,  with  the 
exception  of  their  being  true  granites,  are  exactly  those 
of  the  layers  which  repose  over  and  under  them.  Now, 
the  homogeneous  patches  serve,  as  I  have  said,  to  throw 
light  on  the  secret  of  the  formation  of  these.  In  one  im- 
portant respect  the  granitic  rocks  differ  widely  among 
themselves.  Some  of  them  contain  potass  and  soda  in 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  347 

such  large  proportions,  and  have  such  a  tendency  to  dis- 
integrate, in  consequence,  that  they  furnish  much  less 
durable  materials  for  building  than  the  better  sandstones ; 
while  others,  of  an  almost  indestructible  quality,  are  devoid 
of  these  salts  altogether.  Potass  and  soda  form  powerful 
fluxes ;  and  it  seems  at  least  natural  to  infer  that,  should 
wide  tracts  of  granitic  rock  be  exposed  to  an  intense  but 
equable  heat,  the  portions  of  the  mass  in  which  the  fluxes 
exist  in  large  proportions  must  pass  into  a  much  higher 
state  of  fluidity  than  the  portions  in  which  they  .are  less 
abundant,  or  which  are  altogether  devoid  of  them.  Single 
strata  and  detached  masses  might  thus  come  to  be  in  the 
state  of  extremest  fusion  of  which  their  substance  was 
capable,  and  all  their  particles,  disengaged,  might  be  enter- 
ing freely  into  the  combinations  peculiar  to  the  plutonic 
rocks,  when  all  around  them  continued  to  bear  the  semi- 
chemical,  semi-mechanical  characteristics  of  the  metamor- 
phic  ones.  Hence  it  is  possibly  the  origin  of  some  of 
those  granite  veins,  open  above,  and  terminating  below  in 
wedge-like  points,  which  have  so  puzzled  the  Huttonians 
of  a  former  age,  and  which  have  been  so  triumphantly 
referred  to  by  their  opponents  as  evidences  that  the  granite 
had  been  precipitated  by  some  aqueous  solution. 

SEPTAEIA,  OR  CEMENT-STONES  OF  THE  LIAS. 

Observe  these  nodular  masses  of  pale,  blue  limestone, 
that  seem  as  if  they  had  cracked  in  some  drying  process, 
and  had  afterwards  the  cracks  carefully  filled  up  with  a 
light-colored  cement.  The  flaws  are  occupied  by  a  rich 
calcareous  spar ;  and  in  the  centre  of  each  mass  we  find, 
in  most  instances,  a  large  ill-preserved  Ammonite,  which 
has  also  its  spar-filled  cracks  and  fissures,  as  if  it,  too,  had 


£48  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES    FROM 

been  burst  asunder  by  the  process  which  had  rent  the  sur- 
rounding matrix.  These  nodular  masses  are  the  charac- 
teristic septaria  or  cementstones  of  the  Lias,  so  much 
used  in  England  for  making  a  hard,  enduring  mortar,  that 
has  the  quality  of  setting  under  water.  Their  bluish-col- 
ored portions  are  so  largely  charged  with  the  argillaceous 
matter  of  the  bed  in  which  they  occur,  and  contain,  be- 
sides, so  considerable  a  mixture  of  iron,  that,  refusing  to 
slake  like  common  lime,  they  have  to  be  crushed,  after 
calcination,  by  mechanical  means ;  while  the  fossil  in  the 
centre,  and  the  semi-transparent  spar  of  the  ci'acks,  are 
composed  of  matter  purely  calcareous.  And  from  this 
peculiar  mixture  the  cement  seems  to  derive  those  setting 
qualities  which  render  it  of  such  value. 

AMMONITES  OF   THE   NORTHERN   LIAS. 

The  Ammonites  of  the  upper  beds  of  the  Lias  approach 
more  to  the  type  of  the  Ammonite  communis^  being  com- 
paratively flat  when  viewed  sectionally,  and  having  the 
whorls  broadly  visible,  as  in  the  Ionic  volute ;  while  the 
Ammonites  of  the  lower  beds  approach  in  type  to  the  Am- 
monite heterophyllus,  —  each  succeeding  whorl  covering  so 
largely  the  whorl  immediately  under  it,  that  the  spiral  line 
seems  restricted  to  a  minute  hollow  in  the  centre,  scarce 
equal  in  extent,  in  some  specimens,  to  the  twentieth  part 
of  the  entire  area.  In  other  words,  the  Ammonites  of  the 
Upper  Lias  in  this  deposit  represent,  as  a  group,  the  true 
ammonite  type;  while  in  the  Lower  Lius  they  approach 
more  nearly,  as  a  group,  to  the  type  of  the  nautilus.  And 
not  only  are  they  massicr  in  form,  but  also  absolutely  larger 
in  size.  I  have  found  Ammonites  in  the  more  ponderous 
septaria,  that  fully  doubled  in  bulk  any  I  ever  saw  in  the 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  349 

upper  shales.  We  occasionally  find  nodules  that,  having 
formed  in  the  outer  rings  of  these  larger  shells,  somewhat 
resemble  the  rims  of  wheels,  —  in  some  cases,  wheels  of 
not  very  diminutive  size. 

BELEHNITES  OF  THE  NORTHERN  LIAS. 

We  find  the  Belemnites  of  the  lower  deposit,  like  its 
Ammonites,  of  a  bulkier  form  than  those  of  the  upper 
beds.  The  Belemnites  abbreviatus  and  elonyatus,  both 
large,  massy  species,  especially  the  former,  are  of  common 
occurrence ;  while  those  most  abundant  in  the  upper  beds 
are  the  Belemnites  longissimus  and  penicillatus,  both  ex- 
ceedingly slim  species.  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  Sir 
R.  Murchison,  in  his  list  of  fossils  peculiar  to  the  Lias  as 
developed  in  the  midland  counties  of  England,  specifies 
the  Belemnites  penicillatus  as  characteristic  of  its  upper, 
and  the  Belemnites  abbreviatus  and  elongatus  of  its  lower 
division. 

CUTTLE-FISH. 

Is  the  reader  acquainted  with  at  once  the  largest  and 
most  curious  of  British  Mollusca,  —  the  cuttle-fish,  —  a 
creature  which  stands  confessedly  at  the  head  of  the  great 
natural  division  to  which  it  belongs  ?  Independently  of 
its  intrinsic  interest  to  the  naturalist,  it  bears  for  the  com- 
mentator and  the  man  of  letters  an  interest  of  an  extrinsic 
and  reflected  kind.  No  other  mollusc  occupies  so  prom- 
inent a  place  in  our  literature.  It  is  furnished  with  an 
ink-bag,  from  which,  when  pursued  by  an  enemy,  it  ejects 
a  dingy  carbonaceous  fluid,  that  darkens  the  water  •for 
yards  around,- and  then  escapes  in  the  cloud,  —  like  some 
Homeric  hero  worsted  by  his  antagonist,  but  favored  by 

30 


350  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

the  gods,  or  some  body  of  military  retreating  unseen  from 
a  lost  field,  under  the  cover  of  a  smoking  shot.  And 
there  has  scarce  arisen  a  controversy  since  the  days  of 
Cicero,  in  which  the  cuttle-fish,  with  its  ink-bag,  has  not 
furnished  some  one  of  the  controversialists  with  an  illus- 
tration. It  has  attained  to  some  celebrity,  too,  on  another 
and  altogether  different  account.  That  enormous  mon- 
ster the  kraken  of  Norway,  of  which  our  earlier  geogra- 
phers tell  such  surprising  stories,  was  held  to  belong  to 
this  curious  family.  And  though  the  monster  has  disap- 
peared from  the  treatises  of  our  naturalists  for  a  full  half- 
century,  and  from  the  pages  of  even  our  most  credulous 
voyagers  for  at  least  a  century  more,  it  maintained  its 
place  as  a  real  existence  long  enough  to  be  assigned  a  per- 
manent niche  in  our  literature.  It  has  been  described  as 
raising  its  vast  arms  out  of  the  water  to  the  height  of  tall 
forest-trees,  and  as  stretching  its  knobbed  and  wartcd 
bulk,  roughened  with  shells,  and  darkened  with  sea-weed, 
for  roods  and  furlongs  together,  —  resembling  nothing  less 
extensive  than  some  range  of  rocky  skerries  on  some  dan- 
gerous coast,  or  some  long  chain  of  sand  banks,  forming 
the  bar  of  some  great  river.  It  was  introduced  to  the 
reading  world  with  much  circumstantiality  of  detail,  by  an 
old  Norwegian  bishop  (Eric  Pontappidon),  as  "an  animal 
the  largest  in  creation,  whose  body  rises  above  the  surface 
of  the  water  like  a  mountain,  and  its  arms  like  the  masts 
of  ships."  And  one  of  the  French  continuators  of  Buffon, 
—  Denys  Montfort,  —  regarding  it  as  at  least  a  possible 
existence,  has  given,  in  his  history  of  Mollusca,  a  print  of 
a  colossal  cuttle-fish  hanging  at  the  gunwale  of  a  ship, 
and  twisting  its  immense  arms  about  the  masts  and  rig- 
ging,—  a  feat  which  the  cuttle-fish  of  the  Indian  seas  is 
said  sometimes  to  accomplish,  if  not  with  a  ship,  at  least 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  351 

with  a  canoe.  But  nowhere  does  the  kraken  of  Norway 
look  half  so  imposing  or  half  so  poetical  as  in  Milton.  In 
palpable  reference  to  the  old  bishop's  "largest  animal  in 
creation,"  we  find  the  poet  describing,  in  one  of  his  finest 
similes,  — 

"  That  sea-beast, 

Leviathan,  which  God  of  all  his  works 
Created  hugest  that  swim  the  ocean  stream : 
Him,  haply  slumb'ring  on  the  Norway  foam,  v 
The  pilot  of  some  small  night-foundered  skiff, 
Deeming  some  island,  oft,  as  seamen  tell, 
AVith  fixed  anchor  in  his  scaly  rind 
Moors  by  his  side  under  the  lee,  while  night 
Invests  the  sea,  and  wished  morn  delays." 

The  existing  cuttle-fish  of  our  seas,  though  vastly  less 
imposing  in  its  proportions  than  the  kraken  of  Norway,  is, 
as  I  have  said,  a  very  curious  animal,  —  constituting,  as  it 
does,  that  highest  link  among  Mollusca,  in  which  creatures 
without  a  true  back-bone  or  a  true  brain  approach  nearest, 
in  completeness  of  structure  and  the  sagacity  of  their 
instincts,  to  the  vertebrata.  All  my  readers  on  the  sea- 
coast,  especially  such  of  them  as  live  near  sandy  bays,  or 
in  the  neighborhood  of  salmon-fishings,  must  have  fre- 
quently seen  the  species  most  abundant  in  our  seas,  —  the 
common  loligo  or  strollach  (Loligo  vulyaris);  and  almost 
all  of  them  must  have  the  recollection  of  having  regarded 
it,  when  they  first  stumbled  upon  it  in  some  solitary  walk, 
as  an  extraordinary  monster,  worthy  of  the  first  place  in  a 
museum.  "The  cuttle-fish,"  says  Kirby,  in  his  Bridge  water 
Treatise,  "  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  works  of  the  Cre- 
ator." We  have  no  creature  at  all  approaching  it  in  size, 
that  departs  so  widely  from  the  familiar,  every-day  type 
of  animal  life,  whether  developed  on  the  land  or  in  the 
water. 


352  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

A  man  buried  to  the  neck  in  a  sack,  and  prepared  for 
such  a  race  as  Tennent  describes  in  his  "  Anster  Fair,"  is 
an  exceedingly  strange-looking  animal,  but  not  half  so 
strange-looking  as  a  strollach.  Let  us  just  try  to  improve 
him  into  one,  and  give,  in  this  way,  some  idea  of  the  ani- 
mal to  those  unacquainted  with  it.  First,  then,  the  sack 
must  be  brought  to  a  point  at  the  bottom,  as  if  the  legs 
were  sewed  up  tightly  together,  and  the  corners  left  pro- 
jecting so  as  to  form  two  flabby  fins ;  and  further,  the  sack 
must  be  a  sack  of  pink,  thickly  speckled  with  red,  and  tol- 
erably open  at  the  other  end,  where  the  neck  and  head 
protrude.  So  much  for  the  changes  on  the  sack ;  but  the 
changes  on  the  parts  that  rise  out  of  the  sack  must  be  of 
a  much  more  extraordinary  character.  We  must  first  ob- 
literate the  face,  and  then,  fixing  on  the  crown  of  the  head 
a  large  beak  of  black  horn,  crooked  as  that  of  the  parrot, 
we  must  remove  the  mouth  to  the  opening  between  the 
mandibles.  Around  the  broad  base  of  the  beak  must  we 
insert  a  circular  ring  of  brain,  as  if  this  part  of  the  animal 
had  no  other  vocation  than  to  take  care  of  the  mouth  and 
its  pertinents;  and  around  the  circular  brain  must  we 
plant,  as  if  on  the  coronal  ring  of  the  head,  no  fewer  than 
ten  long  arms,  each  furnished  with  double  rows  of  concave 
suckers,  that  resemble  cups  arranged  on  the  plane  of  a  nar- 
row table.  The  tout  ensemble  must  serve  to  remind  one 
of  the  head  of  some  Indian  chief  bearing  a  crown  of  tall 
feathers ;  and  directly  below  the  crown,  where  the  cheeks, 
or  rather  the  ears,  had  been,  we  must  fix  two  immense 
eyes,  huge  enough  to  occupy  what  had  been  the  whole 
sides  of  the  face.  Though  the  brain  of  an  ordinary-sized 
loligo  be  scarcely  larger  than  a  ring  for  the  little  finger,  its 
eyes  are  scarcely  smaller  than  those  of  an  ox.  To  com- 
plete our  cuttle-fish,  we  must  insist,  as  a  condition,  th^t, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  353 

when  in  motion,  the  metamorphosed  sack-racer  must  either 
walk  head  downwards  on  his  arms,  or  glide,  like  a  boy  de- 
scending an  inclined  plane  on  ice,  feet  foremost,  with  the 
point  of  his  sack  first,  and  his  beak  and  arms  last ;  or,  in 
other  words,  that,  reversing  every  ordinary  circumstance 
of  voluntary  motion,  he  must  make  a  snout  or  cut-water 
of  his  feet,  and  a  long  trailing  tail  of  his  arms  and  head. 
The  cuttle-fish,  when  walking,  always  walks  with  its  mouth 
nearer  the  earth  than  any  other  part  of  either  head  or 
body,  and  when  swimming,  always  follows  its  tail,  instead 
of  being  followed  by  it. 

This  last  curious  condition,  though  doubtless,  on  the 
whole,  the  best  adapted  to  the  conformation  and  instincts 
of  the  creature,  often  proves  fatal  to  it,  especially  in  calm 
weather  and  quiet  inland  friths,  when  not  a  ripple  breaks 
upon  the  shore,  to  warn  that  the  shore  is. near.  An  enemy 
appears;  the  ci*eature  ejects  its  cloud  of  ink,  like  a  sharp- 
shooter discharging  his  rifle  ere  he  retreats;  and  then, 
darting  away  tail  foremost  under  the  cover,  it  grounds 
itself  high  upon  the  beach,  and  perishes  there.  Few  men 
have  walked  much  along  the  shores  of  a  sheltered  bay 
without  witnessing  a  catastrophe  of  this  kind.  The  last 
loligo  I  saw  strand  itself  in  this  way,  was  a  large  and  very 
vigorous  animal.  The  day  was  extremely  calm;  I  heard 
a  peculiar  sound,  —  a  squelch,  if  I  may  employ  such  a 
word,  —  and  there,  a  few  yards  away,  was  a  loligo  nearly 
two  feet  in  length,  high  and  diy  upon  the  pebbles.  I  laid 
hold  of  it  by  the  sheath  or  sack ;  and  the  loligo,  in  turn, 
laid  hold  of  the  pebbles,  just  as  I  have  seen  a  boy,  when 
borne  off  against  his  will  by  a  stronger  than  himself,  grasp- 
ing fast  to  projecting  door-posts  and  furniture.  The  peb- 
bles were  hard,  smooth,  and  heavy,  but  the  creature  raised 
them  with  ease,  by  twining  its  flexible  arms  around  them, 


354  *  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

and  then  forming  a  vacuum  in  each  of  its  suckers.  I  sub- 
jected one  of  my  hands  to  its  grasp,  and  it  seized  fast  hold  ; 
but  though  the  suckers  were  still  employed,  it  employed 
them  on  a  different  principle.  Ai-ound  the  circular  rim  of 
each  there  is  a  fringe  of  minute  thorns,  hooked  somewhat 
like  those  of  the  wild  rose.  In  fastening  on  the  hard 
smooth  pebbles,  these  were  overtopped  by  a  fleshy  mem- 
brane, much  in  the  manner  that  the  cushions  of  a  cat's 
paw  overtop  its  claws,  when  the  animal  is  in  a  state  of 
tranquillity;  and,  by  means  of  the  projecting  membrane, 
the  hollow  inside  was  rendered  air-tight,  and  the  vacuum 
completed  ;  but  in  Dealing  with  the  hand,  a  soft  substance, 
the  thorns  were  laid  bare,  like  the  claws  of  the  cat  when 
stretched  out  in  anger,  and  at  least  a  thousand  minute 
prickles  were  fixed  in  the  skin  at  once.  They  failed  to 
penetrate  it,  for.  they  were  short,  and  individually  not 
strong,  but  acting  together  and  by  hundreds,  they  took 
at  least  a  very  firm  hold. 

What  follows  the  reader  may  deem  barbarous;  but  the 
men  who  gulp  down  at  a  sitting  half  a  hundred  live  oys- 
ters, to  gratify  their  taste,  will  surely  forgive  me  the  de- 
struction of  a  single  mollusc  to  gratify  my  curiosity.  I  cut 
open  the  sack  of  the  creature  with  a  sharp  penknife,  and 
laid  bare  the  viscera.  What  a  sight  for  Hervey  when 
prosecuting,  in  the  earlier  stages,  his  grand  discovery  of 
the  circulation !  There,  in  the  centre,  was  the  yellow  mus- 
cular heart  propelling  into  the  transparent  tubular  arteries 
the  yellow  blood.  Beat  —  beat  —  beat ;  —  I  could  see  the 
whole  as  in  a  glass  model ;  and  all  I  lacked  were  powers 
of  vision  nice  enough  to  enable  me  to  detect  the  fluid  pas- 
sing through  the  minuter  arterial  branches,  and  then  re- 
turning by  the  veins  to  the  two  other  hearts  of  the  crea- 
ture ;  for,  strange  to  say,  it  is  furnished  with  three.  There 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  855 

Is  the  yellow  heart  at  the  centre,  and,  lying  altogether  de- 
tached from  it,  two  other  darker-colored  hearts  at  the 
sides !  I  cut  a  little  deeper.  There  was  the  gizzard-like 
stomach,  filled  with  fragments  of  minute  mussel  and  crab- 
shells  ;  and  there,  inserted  in  the  spongy,  conical,  yellow- 
ish-colored liver,  and  somewhat  resembling  in  form  a  Flor- 
ence flask,  the  ink-bag  distended,  with  its  deep  dark  sepia, 
—  the  identical  pigment  sold  under  that  name  in  our  color- 
shops,  and  so  extensively  used  in  landscape-drawing  by 
the  limner.  I  once  saw  a  pool  of  water,  within  the  cham- 
ber of  a  salmon-wear,  darkened  by  this  substance  almost 
to  the  consistence  of  ink.  Where  the  bottom  was  laid 
dry,  some  fifteen  or  twenty  cuttle-fish  lay  dead,  some  of 
them  green,  some  blue,  some  yellow ;  for  it  is  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  creature  that,  in  passing  into  a  state 
of  decomposition,  it  assumes  a  succession  of  brilliant  col- 
ors ;  but  at  one  of  the  sides  of  the  chamber,  where  there 
was  a  shallow  pool,  six  or  eight  individuals,  the  sole  sur- 
vivors of  the  shoal,  still  retained  their  original  pink  tint, 
freckled  with  red,  and  went  darting  about  in  panic  terror 
within  their  narrow  confines,  emitting  ink  at  almost  every 
dart,  until  the  whole  pool  had  become  a  deep  solution  of 
sepia.  But  I  digress. 

I  next  laid  open  the  huge  eyes  of  the  stranded  cuttle- 
fish. They  were  curious  organs,  —  more  simple  in  their 
structure  than  those  of  any  quadruped,  or  even  any  fish, 
with  which  I  am  acquainted,  but  well  adapted,  I  doubt 
not,  for  the  purpose  of  seeing.  A  camera-obscura  may  be 
described  as  consisting  of  two  parts,  —  a  lens  in  front,  and 
a  darkened  chamber  behind;  but  in  both  the  brute  and 
human  eye  we  find  a  third  part  added ;  there  is  a  lens  in 
the  middle,  a  darkened  chamber  behind,  and  a  lighted 
chamber,  or  rather  vestibule,  in  front.  Now  this  lighted 


356  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

vestibule  — the  cornea  —  is  wanting  in  the  eye  of  the  cut- 
tle-fish. The  lens  is  placed  in  front,  and  the  darkened 
chamber  behind ;  the  construction  of  the  organ  is  that  of 
a  common  camera-obscura,  without  aught  additional.  I 
found  something  worthy  of  remark,  too,  in  the  peculiar 
style  in  which  the  chamber  is  darkened.  In  the  higher 
animals  it  may  be  described  as  a  chamber  hung  with  black 
velvet;  the  pigmentum  nigrum  which  covers  it  is  of  deep- 
est black ;  but  in  the  cuttle-fish  it  is  a  chamber  hung 
with  velvet,  not  of  a  black,  but  of  a  dark  purple  hue ;  the 
pigmentutn  nigrum  is  of  a  purplish-red  color.  There  is 
something  curious  in  marking  this,  as  it  were,  first  de- 
parture from  an  invariable  condition  of  eyes  of  the  more 
perfect  structure,  and  in  them  tracing  the  peculiarity  down- 
wards through  almost  every  shade  of  color,  to  the  emerald- 
like  eye-specks  of  the  pecten,  and  the  still  more  rudimental 
red  eye-specks  of  the  star-fish.  After  examining  the  eyes, 
I  next  laid  open,  in  all  its  length,  from  the  neck  to  the 
point  of  the  sack,  the  dorsal  bone  of  the  creature, — its 
internal  shell,  I  should  rather  say,  for  bone  it  has  none. 
The  form  of  the  shell  in  this  species  is  that  of  a  feather 
equally  developed  in  the  web  on  both  sides.  It  gives 
rigidity  to  the  body,  and  furnishes  the  muscles  with  a  ful- 
crum ;  and  we  find  it  composed,  like  all  other  shells,  of  a 
mixture  of  animal  matter  and  carbonate  of  lime.  In  some 
of  the  genera  it  is  much  more  complicated  and  rigid  than 
in  that  to  which  the  strollach  belongs,  consisting,  instead 
of  one,  of  numerous  plates,  and  in  form  somewhat  resem- 
bling a  flat  shallop  with  its  cargo  rising  over  the  gunwale, 
or  one  of  the  valves  of  a  pearl  mussel  occupied  by  the 
animal.  Is  my  description  of  this  curious  creature  too 
lengthy  ?  The  young  geologist  who  sets  himself  to  study 
the  fossils  of  the  Oolitic  and  Cretaceous  systems  would  be 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  357 

all  the  better  for  knowing  a  great  deal  more  regarding  it 
than  I  have  told  him  here.  He  will  discover  that  at  least 
one-half  the  molluscous  remains  of  these  deposits,  their 
belemnites,  ammonites,  nautili,  nummulites,  baculites,  ha- 
mites,  lituites,  turrilites,  and  scaphites,  belonged  to  the 
great  natural  class  —  singularly  rich  in  its  extinct  orders 
and  genera,  though  comparatively  poor  in  its  existing 
ones  —  which  we  find  represented  by  the  cuttle-fish. 

CONGENERS  OF  THE  CUTTLE-FISH,  BELEMNTTES,  ETC. 

Among  its  many  extinct  congeners,  the  order  of  the 
Belemnites  was  one  of  not  the  least  curious.  It  has  been 
remarked,  that  in  the  cuttle-fish,  as  we  now  find  it,  a 
greater  number  of  distinct  portions  of  the  organization  of 
creatures,  belonging  to  widely-separated  divisions  of  the 
animal  kingdom,  are  to  be  seen  united  than  in  any  other 
animal.  Cut  off  its  head  immediately  below  the  arms,  and 
we  have  in  the  dissevered  portion,  with  its  ring  of  nerve, 
its  central  mouth,  and  its  suckers,  the  true  analogue  of  a 
star-fish.  The  radiated  zoophite  lies  before  us.  Some  of 
its  genera  have  their  plated  and  jointed  antenna  placed 
above  and  below  the  eyes.  The  creature,  so  far  as  these 
organs  give  it  a  character,  is  no  longer  a  zoophite,  but  an 
insect  or  crustacean.  But  then  there  is  the  soft  sac,  with 
its  fin-like  appendages,  the  internal  shell,  and  the  yellow 
transparent  blood.  These  are  unequivocal  characteristics 
of  the  mollusc.  Yes ;  but  then  there  is  a  horny  beak,  and 
there  a  muscular  gizzard.  It  must  have  laid  the  bird  under 
contribution  for  these.  There  is,  besides,  a  true  tongue, 
and  an  organ  for  hearing ;  and,  though  one  of  the  cham- 
bers be  awanting,  a  singularly  large  and  efficient  eye. 
These  organs  are  all  borrowed  from  the  vertebrata.  And 


358  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

—  as  if  to  secure  its  claim  to  originality,  not  only  in  its 
combinations,  but  in  its  parts  —  there  are  its  three  hearts, 
and  its  well-stored  ink-bag,  —  chattels  that  it  could  scarce 
have  borrowed  anywhere.  It  occupies,  according  to  Cu- 
vier,  a  sort  of  central  place  in  the  animal  kingdom,  where 
roads  from  all  the  various  divisions  converge,  and  the  three 
hearts  and  the  ink-bag  mark,  as  it  were,  the  point  at  which 
they  meet.  Extensive  and  wonderful,  however,  as  its 
combination  of  parts  may  seem,  its  extinct  congener,  the 
Belenmite,  added  to  the  number  at  least  one  part  more. 
Like  that  curious  gelatinous  zoophite,  the  Dutch  man-of- 
war  (Physalia),  it  was  furnished  with  a  sailing  apparatus. 
Not  only  could  it  swim  tail  foremost,  and  walk  head  down- 
wards, like  our  existing  cuttle-fish,  but  it  could  also  raise 
itself  to  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  there,  spreading  out 
its  sail  of  thin  membrane,  speed  gaily  away  before  the 
wind.  Several  of  the  existing  congeners  of  the  creature, 
such  as  the  Argonauta  Argo,  are  sailors  still ;  but  unlike 
the  Belemnite,  or  its  analogue,  the  cuttle-fish,  they  are 
furnished  with  external  shells.  They  are  sailors  each  in 
its  own  little  boat,  whereas  the  Beleranite  was  a  sailor 
without  a  boat,  —  such  a  sailor  as  Franklin  was,  when,  lay- 
ing himself  at  full  length  in  the  water,  he  laid  hold  of  the 
string  of  an  elevated  kite  during  a  smart  breeze,  and,  with- 
out effort  on  his  own  part,  was  drawn  across  a  small  lake 
by  the  impulsion  of  the  wind  above. 

I  have  full  in  my  view  where  I  write,  a  shelf  occupied 
with  ranges  of  our  Scotch  Belemnites  of  the  Lias,  placed 
on  end,  and  leaning  against  the  wall,  like  muskets  in  an 
armory.  A  second  shelf  exhibits  ranges  of  our  Scotch 
Belemnites  of  the  Oolite.  Ei-e  adverting,  however,  to 
their  specific  differences, — differences  which  their  mode  of 
arrangement  renders  apparent  at  a  glance,  —  let  me  select 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  359 

for  description  an  average  specimen,  as  a  type  of  the 
order.  Here,  then,  is  the  JSelemnite  elongatus,  from  the 
Upper  Lias  of  Eathie.  The  architect  gives  the  propor- 
tions of  his  columns  by  a  scale  of  diameters.  The  height 
of  the  Tuscan  column  is  equal  to  seven,  that  of  the  Doric 
to  eight,  that  of  the  Ionic  to  nine,  and  that  of  the  Corin- 
thian to  ten  diameters.  In  describing  the  proportions  of 
the  Belemnite,  I  shall  borrow  a  hint  from  the  architect, 
by  making  my  scale  one  of  diameter  also;  fixing  my 
calipers,  not  at  the  base  of  the  shaft,  but  one-fourth  of  its 
entire  length  up.  Let  the  reader  imagine  a  small  cylin- 
drical column  of  brown  polished  stone,  diminishing  from 
the  base  upwards  for  three-fourths  of  its  height  much  in 
the  same  proportions  as  one  of  the  Grecian  columns 
diminishes,  and  then  in  the  remaining  fourth  suddenly 
sweeping  to  a  point.  Its  length  —  eight  inches  in  the 
present  instance  —  is  equal,  like  that  of  a  Corinthian 
shaft,  to  ten  of  its  diameters.  Within  this  solid  column 
we  find  an  internal  cone  rising  from  the  common  base,  the 
whole  of  which  it  occupies,  and  terminating  in  the  apex, 
at  about  one-thusd  the  height  of  the  whole.  It  is  dif- 
ferent in  color  and  structure  from  the  brown  pointed 
shaft  at  which  it  is  included.  The  shaft  or  column  shows 
as  if  it  had  been  formed,  like  a  dipped  candle,  by  repeated 
accessions  to  its  outer  surface ;  whereas  the  internal  cone 
shows  that  it  has  been  formed  by  accessions  to  its  base. 
The  shaft  seems  to  have  grown  as  a  tree  grows,  and  ex- 
hibits its  internal  concentric  rings  crossed  by  lines  radi- 
ating from  the  centre,  just  as  the  yearly  rings  of  the  tree 
are  crossed  by  the  medullary  rays.  The  internal  cone,  on 
the  contrary,  was  reared  course  after  course,  as  a  pyramid 
is  built  of  ashlar,  —  with  this  difference,  however,  that  it 
was  the  terminal  course  of  the  apex,  that  was  laid  first, 


360  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

:iml  that  every  succeeding  course  was  added  to  the  base. 
The  entire  Belemnite  was  originally  of  greater  length  than 
the  specimen  before  us  indicates;  for  the  cone  extended 
very  considerably  beyond  the  base  of  the  column,  and 
beyond  the  cone  there  was  a  still  farther  prolongation  of  a 
kind  of  horny  sheath,  composed  of  the  internal  shell  of 
an  extinct  order  of  cuttle-fish,  its  substitute  for  a  verte- 
brate column;  just  as  the  existing  loligo  has  its  thin  elastic 
pen,  and  the  existing  sepia  its  stiffer  and  more  complex 
bundle  of  calcareous  plates.  There  are  English  speci- 
mens, in  which  the  characteristic  ink-bag  may  still  be 
found  resting  on  the  base  of  the  internal  cone,  giving 
evidence  at  once  of  the  class  of  animals  to  which  the 
fossil  belonged,  and  that  the  column  and  cone  must  have 
been  internal,  not  external,  shells.  Nature,  though  liberal 
to  all  her  creatures,  is  no  spendthrift.  We  find  that  to 
her  naked  Cephalopoda,  such  as  the  strollach  and  the 
sepia,  she  gives  in  the  ink-bag  an  ability  of  hiding  them- 
selves in  sudden  darkness ;  but  that  to  the  shelled  crea- 
tures of  their  class,  such  as  the  nautilus,  she  gives  no  ink- 
bag.  For  them  the  protecting  shell  isA  sufficient.  The 
ink-bag  of  the  Belemnite  at  once  shows  that  it  was  a 
cuttle-fish,  and  that  it  was  naked.  Here,  in  a  specimen 
from  the  Whitby  Lias,  we  may  see  the  bag  still  charged 
with  its  ink ;  and  so  slight  is  the  change  induced  by  un- 
told centuries,  in  the  nature  of  the  carbonaceous  substance 
which  composed  the  latter,  that,  after  having  scraped  it 
down,  and  diluted  it  with  water,  we  may  still  use  it  as  a 
pigment.  We  find  it  stated  by  Buckland,  that  the  tinting 
of  a  drawing  made  with  fossil  ink  at  his  request,  by  his 
friend  Francis  Chantrey,  was  pronounced  by  a  celebrated 
painter,  unacquainted  with  the  secret  of  its  origin,  as  pecu- 
liarly agreeable  and  well-toned. 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  361 

But  the  Belemnite,  with  its  horny  prolongation,  was 
not  merely  a  sort  of  stiffener  introduced  into  the  body  of 
the  creature  to  give  it  rigidity,  —  as  the  seamstress  intro- 
duces, for  a  similar  purpose,  bits  of  wire  and  whalebone 
into  her  pieces  of  dress,  or  as  the  pen  exists  in  the  strol- 
lach  :  the  stony  column,  and  its  internal  cone,  constituted, 
besides,  the  sailing  organs  of  the  creature,  —  the  cone 
forming  its  floating  apparatus,  and  the  column  its  ballast. 
The  cone,  as  I  have  said,  consists  of  a  number  of  layers, 
ranged  parallel  to  its  base,  like  courses  of  ashlar  in  a  pyra- 
mid. We  find  each  layer,  when  detached,  exactly  resem- 
bling a  thick  patent  watch-glass,  concave  on  its  under, 
convex  on  its  upper,  surface.  Now,  each  of  these  formed, 
in  its  original  state,  not  a  solid  mass,  but  a  hollow,  thinly 
partitioned  chamber  or  story ;  and,  perforating  the  entire 
range  of  stories  from  apex  to  base,  there  was  a  cylindrical 
pipe,  just  as  the  reader  must  have  seen  the  cylindrical 
case  of  a  turnpike  stair  passing  upwards  through  the 
stories  of  some  ancient  tower  from  bottom  to  top.  And 
this  pipe  was  the  siphuncle  or  pump  through  which  the 
creature  regulated  its  specific  gravity,  and  sank  to  the 
bottom  or  rose  to  the  surface,  just  as  it  willed.  Mr.  J.  S. 
Miller,  well  known  for  his  labors  among  the  Crinoidea, 
mentions,  in  his  paper  on  Belemnites,  an  interesting  ex- 
periment with  regard  to  the  cone.  He  extracted  it  care- 
fully from  one  of  his  specimens,  and  then  inserting  in  the 
hollow  of  the  stony  column  which  it  had  occupied,  a  cone 
of  oiled  paper  filled  with  cotton,  he  placed  the  specimen 
in  water,  and  found  the  buoyancy  of  the  cone  compensat- 
ing so  completely  for  the  density  of  the  column,  that  the 
whole  floated.  Now,  to  demonstrate  the  use  of  the  bal- 
lasting column,  let  us  imagine  a  sail  raised  over  the  cone, 
and  the  whole  sent  to  sea  in  a  high  wind.  Has  the  reader 

31 


362  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

ever  sailed,  when  a  boy,  his  mimic  ship,  and  does  he 
remember  how  imperative  it  was  that  there  should  be  lead 
on  the  keel  ?  The  stony  column  is  the  lead  here  ;  and 
from  the  form  of  the  creature,  as  indicated  in  the  entirer 
specimens,  some  such  internal  ballasting  seems  to  have 
been  as  essential  to  preserve  its  upright  position  as  the 
lead  is  to  the  boy's  ship.  There  are,  however,  but  few  of 
our  naturalists  who  believe  with  Mr.  J.  S.  Miller,  that  the 
column  was  originally  the  dense  and  solid  body  it  is  now. 
Lamarck  held  that,  like  the  bone  of  the  existing  sepia,  it 
was  of  "a  spongy  and  cellular  texture;"  Parkinson,  that 
it  was  "porous  or  cork -like;"  and  Buckland,  that  "the 
idea  of  its  having  been  heavy,  solid,  and  stony,  while  it 
formed  part  of  a  living  and  floating  sepia,  is  contrary  to 
all  analogy."  "With  an  eye  to  the  question,  I  have  suc- 
ceeded in  collecting  a  number  of  specimens,  which,  when 
in  their  recent  state,  had  been  crushed  or  broken ;  and  I 
am  disposed  to  hold,  from  the  appearance  of  the  fractures 
in  every  case,  that,  notwithstanding  the  authorities  arrayed 
against  him,  Miller's  view  is  the  right  one.  The  stony 
column,  though  it  must  have  been  somewhat  less  brittle 
in  its  recent  than  in  its  fossil  state,  —  for  it  contained  its 
numerous  thin  plates  of  horn,  tenacious,  as  is  natural  to 
the  substance,  in  a  considerable  degree,  —  was  yet  brittle 
enough  to  break  across  at  very  low  angles,  and  to  exhibit 
on  the  side  to  which  the  force  had  been  applied,  its  yawn- 
ing cracks  and  fissures,  though  on  the  opposite  side  the 
wrinkled  surface  generally  indicates  a  tag  of  adhesion.  In 
the  cases,  too,  in  which  the  Belemnite  had  been  broken 
into  fragments,  I  have  found  every  detached  portion  pre- 
senting its  hard,  sharp  angles,  and  existing  as  a  brittle 
calcareous  body,  however  soft  and  chalky  the  condition 
of  the  more  ^delicate  shells  of  the  deposit  in  which  it 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  863 

occurred.  Nor  do  I  know  that  analogy  is  very  directly 
opposed  to  the  supposition  that  the  column  might  have 
existed  in  the  creature  in  its  stony  state.  If  two  solid 
calcareous  substances,  quite  as  hard  and  dense  as  any 
fossil  Belemnite,  exist  within  the  head  of  the  recent  cod 
and  haddock,  why  might  not  one  solid  calcareous  sub- 
stance have  existed  within  the  body  of  an  extinct  order 
of  cuttle-fish  ? 

I  have  found  considerable  difficulty  in  classing  accord- 
ing to  their  species,  the  Belemnites  of  the  Lias.  I  soon 
exhausted  the  species  enumerated  as  peculiar  to  the  for- 
mation by  Miller,  and  found  a  great  many  others.  They 
divide  naturally  into  two  well-marked  families,  —  the 
specimens  of  a  numerous  family,  that,  like  the  Belemnite 
elongatus,  are  broadest  at  the  base,  and  diminish  as  they 
approach  the  apex,  —  while  the  specimens  of  a  family  con- 
siderably less  numerous,  like  the  Belemnite  fusiformis^ 
resemble  spear-heads,  in  being  broadest  near  the  middle, 
and  in  diminishing  toward  both  ends.  In  subdividing 
these  great  families,  various  principles  of  classification 
have  been  adopted.  There  are  grooves,  single  in  some 
species,  double,  and  even  triple,  in  others;  extending 
from  the  apex  downwards  in  some — extending  from  the 
base  upwards  in  others ;  and  these  have  been  regarded  by 
Phillips  —  the  geologist  who  has  most  thoroughly  studied 
the  subject  —  as  constituting  valuable  characteristics  not 
only  of  species,  but  of  genera  and  formations.  Miller 
took  into  account,  as  principles  of  classification,  not  only 
the  general  form,  but  even  the  comparative  transparency 
or  opacity,  of  the  column,  —  marks  selected  in  accordance 
with  the  belief  that  the  column  was  originally  the  solid 
substance  it  is  now.  The  order  furnishes,  doubtless,  its 
various  marks  of  specific  arrangement.  I  have  even  found 


364  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

the  hint  borrowed  from  the  architect,  of  taking  the  pro- 
portions of  species  by  their  diameters,  not  without  its 
value.  In  measuring,  for  instance,  four  well-preserved 
specimens  of  the  JBelemnite  abbreviatus,  one  of  the  bulk- 
iest which  occurs  in  our  Scotch  Lias,  and  whose  average 
length  is  six  inches,  I  found  that  two  of  the  four  contained 
5J  diameters,  one  5\  diameters,  and  one  5|  diameters ; 
while  another  bulky  Belemnite  of  the  Scotch  Oolite,  not 
yet  named  apparently,  whose  average  length  is  3£  inches, 
contains  only  3£  diameters,  and  strikes  at  once  as  specific- 
ally different  from  the  others.  Equally  striking  is  the 
specific  difference  of  the  JBelemnite  elongatus,  which  con- 
tains from  nine  to  ten  diameters, —  of  another  nameless 
species  which  contains  from  twelve  to  thirteen  diameters, 
—  of  another  which  contains  from  fifteen  to  sixteen  diam- 
eters, —  of  another,  agreeing  in  its  proportions  with  the 
JBelemnite  longissimus  of  Miller,  which  contains  from 
eighteen  to  twrenty  diameters,  —  of  another  which  con- 
tains from  twenty-three  to  twenty-four  diameters,  —  and 
of  yet  another,  long  and  slender  as  a  heckle-pin,  which 
contains  from  thirty  to  thirty-two  diameters.  My  rule  of 
classification  must  of  course  be  regarded  as  merely  a  sub- 
sidiary one.  There  are  species  which  it  does  not  distin- 
guish. It  does  not  distinguish,  for  instance  the  JBelemnite 
sulcatus  of  our  Scotch  Lias,  whose  average  length  is  six 
inches,  from  the  JBelemnite  elongatus,  whose  average 
length  is  eight.  Both  agree  in  containing  from  nine  to 
ten  diameters,  though  in  form  and  appearance  they  are 
strikingly  different, — the  adjuncatus  being  much  more 
pointed  at  the  apex  than  the  other,  much  more  finely  pol- 
ished on  the  surface,  and  furnished  with  a  deeper  groove. 
As  a  subsidiary  rule,  however,  I  have  found  the  rule  of 
the  diameters  a  useful  one.  It  has  enabled  me  to  form  a 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  365 

numerous  and  discordant  assemblage  of  specimens  into 
distinct  groups,  the  specific  identity  of  which,  when  thus 
collected,  is  at  once  verified  by  the  eye. 

But  the  reader,  unless  very  thoroughly  a  geological  one, 
must  be  of  opinion  that  I  have  said  quite  enough  about 
•the  Belemnite.  I  may,  however,  venture  to  add  further, 
that  its  place  in  the  geological  scale  is  not  without  its  in- 
terest. The  periods  of  the  more  ancient  formations,  from 
the  older  Silurian  to  the  older  New  Red  Sandstone  inclu- 
sive, had  all  passed  away  ere  the  order  was  called  into  ex- 
istence. It  then  sprung  into  being  nearly  contemporane- 
ously with  the  bird  and  the  reptile ;  and,  after  existing  by 
myriads  during  the  Oolitic  and  Cretaceous  periods,  passed 
into  extinction  when  the  ocean  of  the  Chalk  had  ceased 
to  exist,  and  just  as  quadrupeds  of  the  higher  order  were 
on  the  eve  of  appearing  on  the  stage,  but  had  not  yet  ap- 
peared. Since  the  period  in  which  it  lived,  though  geo- 
logically modern,  the  surface  of  the  earth  must  have  wit- 
nessed many  strange  revolutions.  There  have  been  Bel- 
emnites  dug  out  of  the  sides  of  the  Himalaya  mountains, 
seventeen  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea. 

COPEOLITES  OF  THE  LIAS.  * 

Large  coprolites  of  peculiar  appearance,  some  of  them 
charged  with  fish-scales  of  the  ganoid  order,  are  tolerably 
abundant ;  and  they  belonged,  I  have  little  doubt,  to  sau- 
rians.  When  bringing  home  with  me,  many  years  since,  a 
well-marked  specimen,  I  overtook  by  the  way  an  acquaint- 
ance who  had  passed  a  considerable  part  of  his  life  in 
Dutch  Guiana.  The  thought  did  not  at  first  occur  to  me 
of  submitting  to  him  my  specimen.  As  we  walked  on  to- 
gether, he  thrust  his  hand  into  his  pocket  to  bring  out  his 

31* 


366  DESCRIPTIVE. SKETCHES   FROM 

handkerchief,  and  brought  out,  instead,  a  large  mass  of 
damaged  snuff.  "Ah,"  he  exclaimed,  " that  roguish  boy ! 
I  was  standing  with  my  neighbor,  the  shopkeeper,  this 
morning,  when  he  was  opening  up  a  cask  of  snuff  that 
had  got  spoiled  with  sea-water;  and  his  boy,  seeing  my 
pocket  provokingly  open  I  suppose,  must  have  dropped  in* 
this  huge  lump !  The  joke  seems  a  small  one,"  he  contin- 
ued, "but  it  must  be  at  least  rather  a  natural  one.  The 
only  other  trick  of  the  kind  ever  played  me  was  by  a 
South  American  Indian,  on  the  banks  of  the  Demerara: 
he  dropped,  unseen,  into  the  pocket  of  my  light  nankeen 
jacket  a  piece  of  sun-baked  alligator's  dung."  "What 
sort  of  a  looking  substance  was  it  ?  "  I  asked,  uncovering 
my  specimen,  and  submitting  it  to  his  examination ;  "  was 
it  at  all  like  that  ?  "  "  Not  at  all  unlike,"  was  the  reply ; 
"  it  bore  an  exactly  similar  pale  yellow  tint,  as  if,  like  the 
dung  of  our  sea-birds  that  swallow  and  digest  fish-bones, 
it  contained  abundance  of  lime ;  and  it  was  sprinkled 
over,  in  the  same  way,  with  the  glittering  enamelled,  scales 
of  that  curious  fish  the  bony  pike,  so  common,  as  you  are 
aware,  in  our  South  American  rivers." 

„  INTRUSIVE  DIKES  OF  EATHIE. 

There  are  appearances  in  connection  with  the  Lias  of 
Eathie  which  seem  well  suited  to  puzzle  the  geologist,  and 
which  have,  in  fact,  already  puzzled  geologists  not  a  little. 
We  find  them  traversed  by  intrusive  dykes  of  what  seems 
a  grayish-colored  trap,  extremely  obstinate  in  yielding  to 
the  hammer,  and  which  stand  up  among  the  softer  shales 
like  the  walls  of  some  ruined  village.  They  are  trap-dikes 
in  every  essential  except  one ;  —  they  occur  in  every  possi- 
ble angle  of  disagreement  with  the  line  of  the  strata :  in 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  SOT 

some  places  they  inclose  the  shale  in  slim,  insulated  strips, 
as  a  river  incloses  its  islands ;  in  others  they  traverse  it 
with  minute  veins  connected  with  the  larger  masses,  in  the 
way  in  which  granite  is  so  often  seen  traversing  gneiss ;  in 
yet  others  the  limestone  in  contact  with  them  seems  posi- 
tively altered ;  —  the  blue  nodule  has,  at  the  line  of  junc- 
tion, its  strip  of  crystalline  white,  and  the  shale  assumes 
an  indurated  and  veinous  character;  the  dikes  are,  in 
short,  trap -dikes  in  every  essential  except  one;  but  the 
wanting  essential  is  of  importance  enough  to  constitute 
the  problem  in  the  case ;  —  they  are  not  composed  of  trap. 
Some  of  our  mineralogists  have  been  a  good  deal  puzzled 
by  finding  crystals  of  sandstone  as  regular  in  their  planes 
and  angles  as  if  formed  of  any  of  the  earths,  or  salts,  or 
metals,  whose  law  it  is  to  build  themselves  up  into  little 
erections  correctly  mathematical  in  every  point  and  line  ; 
and  they  have  read  the  mystery  by  supposing  that  these 
sandstone  crystals  are  mere  casts  moulded  in  the  cavities 
in  which  crystals  had  once  existed.  The  puzzle  of  the 
Lias  dikes  is  of  an  exactly  similar  kind:  they  are  com- 
posed, not  of  an  igneous  rock,  but  of  a  hard,  calcareous 
sandstone,  undistinguishable  in  hand-specimens  from  an 
indurated  sandstone  of  the  Lower  Oolite,  which  may  be 
found  on  the  shore  beneath  Dunrobin,  alternating  with 
shale-beds  of  the  period  of  the  Oxford  clay.  I  succeeded 
in  finding  in  it,  on  one  occasion,  a  shell  in  the  same  state 
of  keeping  in  which  shells  are  so  often  found  in  the  resem- 
bling rocks  of  Sutherland,  but  the  species  unluckily  could 
not  be  distinguished.  A  common  microscope  at  once  de- 
tects the  mechanical  character  of  the  mass ;  and  I  have 
learned  that  Dr.  Fleming,  after  reducing  a  portion  of  it, 
sent  him  as  an  igneous  rock,  to  its  original  sand,  simply  by 


3G8  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

submerging  it  in  acid,  expressed  some  little  fear  lest  the 
sender  should  not  have  been  quite  "  up  to  trap." 

The  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  seems  rather  diffi- 
cult. There  are  instances  in  which  what  had  once  been 
trap-dikes  are  found  existing  as  mere  empty  fissures ;  and 
other  instances  in  which  empty  fissures  have  been  filled  up 
by  aqueous  deposition  from  above.  An  instance  of  the 
one  kind  is  adduced,  as  the  reader  may  perhaps  remember, 
in  the  "  Elements  "  of  Lyell,  from  M'Culloch's  «  Western 
Islands;"  two  contiguous  dikes  traversing  sandstone  in 
Skye  are  found  existing  to  a  considerable  depth  as  mere 
hollow  fissures.  An  instance  of  the  other  kind  may  be 
found,  says  M'Culloch,  in  a  trap-rock  in  Mull,  which  is 
traversed  by  a  dike  that,  among  its  other  miscellane- 
ous contents,  incloses  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  converted  into 
brown  lignite.  In  cases  of  the  first  kind,  the  original  dike, 
composed  of  a  substance  less  suited  to  resist  the  action 
of  the  weather  than  the  containing  rock,  has  mouldered 
away,  and  left  the  vent  from  which  it  issued  a  mere  hollow 
mould,  in  which  the  semblance  of  a  dike  might  be  cast, 
just  as  the  decay  and  disappearance  of  the  real  crystal  is 
supposed  to  have  furnished  a  mould  for  the  formation  of 
the  sandstone  one.  In  cases  of  the  second  kind,  we  see 
the  fictitious  dike  actually  existing ;  it  is  the  sandstone 
crystal  moulded  and  consolidated,  and,  in  short,  ready  for 
the  museum.  And  we  have  but  to  suppose  the  conditions 
of  the  two  classes  of  dikes  united,  —  we  have  but  to  sup- 
pose that  the  hollow  filled  by  the  aqueous  deposition  had 
been  previously  filled  by  an  igneous  injection,  —  in  order 
to  account  for  all  the  phenomena  of  an  igneous  dike  ac- 
companying a  merely  aqueous  one.  We  can  scarce  account 
in  this  way,  however,  for  the  formation  of  the  dikes  at 
Eathie,  seeing  that  the  shale  in  which  they  are  included  is 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  369 

of  so  soft  and  decaying  a  character,  that  no  igneous  rock 
could  of  possibility  be  more  so ;  nor,  even  were  the  case 
otherwise,  could  the  upper  portion  of  the  dykes  have  exis- 
ted as  open  chasms  during  the  period  in  which  the  process 
of  decay  would  have  been  taking  place  in  the  depths  be- 
low. They  would  have  infallibly  filled  up  with  the  frag- 
ments detached  from  the  sides  and  edges. 

Mr.  Strickland,  in  a  paper  on  the  subject  in  the  "  Trans- 
actions of  the  London  Geological  Society,"  states  the 
problem  very  strongly.  "The  substance  of  these  dikes  is 
such,"  he  says,  "  that  it  is  impossible  to  refer  them  to  a 
purely  igneous  origin;"  and  yet,  however  much  "it  may 
resemble  an  aqueous  product,"  it  is  as  impossible  to  doubt 
that  the  dikes  themselves  are  genuine  "intrusive  dikes 
penetrating  the  Lias  shale  in  all  directions."  He  adds 
further,  as  his  ultimate  conclusion  in  the  matter,  that  the 
"  sedimentary  structure  of  the  rock  forbids  us  to  refer  it  to 
igneous  injection  from  below;"  and  that,  " notwithstand- 
ing the  complete  resemblance  of  these  intrusive  masses  to 
ordinary  plutonic  dikes,  we  have  no  resource  left  but  to 
refer  them  to  aqueous  deposition,  filling  up  fissures  which 
had  been  previously  formed  in  the  Lias."  There  is  a  pecu- 
liar rock  in  the  neighborhood,  which  throws,  I  am  of  opin- 
ion, very  considerable  light  on  their  origin.  It  is  what 
may  be  termed  a  syenitic  gneiss,  abounding  in  minute 
crystals  of  hornblende,  that  impart  to  it  a  greenish  hue ; 
and  in  one  place  we  find  it  upheaved  so  directly  among 
the  Lias  beds,  that  it  breaks  their  continuity.  It  raised 
them  so  high  on  its  back,  that  the  denuding  agencies  laid 
the  back  bare  by  sweeping  them  away.  Let  us  but  imag- 
ine that  this  disturbing  rock  began  to  rise  under  the  ear- 
lier impulsions  of  the  elevating  agencies,  and  during  the 
deposition  of  some  one  of  the  later  secondary  formations, 


370  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

as  the  precursor  of  the  granitic  range,  —  that  the  super- 
incumbent Lias,  already  existing  in  its  present  consolidated 
state,  opened  into  yawning  rents  and  fissures  over  it,  as 
the  earth  opened  in  Calabria  during  the  great  earthquake, 
—  and  that  the  loose  sand  and  calcareous  matter  which 
formed  the  sea-bottom  at  the  time,  borne  downwards  by 
the  rushing  water,  suddenly  filled  up  these  rents,  ere  the 
yielding  matrix  had  time  to  lose  any  of  its  steepness  of 
side  or  sharpness  of  edge,  which  it  could  not  have  failed 
to  have  done  had  the  process  been  a  slow  one.  The  sand- 
stone dikes,  apparently  Oolitic,  mark,  it  is  probable,  the 
first  operations  of  those  upheaving  agencies  to  which  we 
owe  the  elevation  of  the  granitic  wall,  and  which,  ere  they 
accomplished  their  work,  may  have  been  active  during  oc- 
casional intervals  for  a  series  of  ages.  I  am  not  of  opinion 
that  the  accompanying  marks  of  alteration  among  the 
shales  and  limestones  of  the  beds  are  sufficiently  unequiv- 
ocal to  render  imperative  some  more  fiery  theory. 


CONTEMPORARY  AND  EXTINCT  TYPES  OF  THE  LIFE  OF  THE 
TEREBKATULA. 

We  find  among  the  earliest  bivalves  of  the  Silurian  Sys- 
tem the  delicate  Terebratula,  with  its  punctured  umbone  ; 
we  follow  it  downwards  through  all  the  various  formations, 
and  see  it  appearing  on  each  succeding  stage,  specifically 
new,  but  generically  old,  until,  quitting  the  rocks  with 
their  dead  remains,  we  pass  to  the  existing  testacea  of  our 
seas,  and  find  among  them  the  ancient  Terebratula  still 
extant  as  a  living  shell.  Contemporary  as  a  genus  with 
every  extinct  form  of  animal  life,  we  find  it  contemporary 
with  the  last  of  created  beings  also,  —  contemporary  with 
ourselves ;  and  the  Terebratula  is  but  one  existence  of  a 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  371 

class  to  which,  though  their  generic  antiquity  may  be 
rather  less  remote,  nearly  the  same  remark  applies.  The 
ostrea  still  exists,  —  its  congener  and  contemporary,  the 
gryphsea,  has  perished;  the  nautilus  survives,  —  its  congener 
and  contemporary,  the  ammonite,  is  long  since  dead  ;  the 
cuttle-fish  abounds  on  our  shores,  —  its  congener  and  con- 
temporary, the  belemnite,  is  to  be  found  in  only  our  rocks. 
And  thus  the  list  runs  on.  We  can  scarce  glance  over  a 
group  of  fossils,  whatever  its  age,  which  we  do  not  find 
divisible  into  two  classes  of  types,  —  the  types  which  still 
remain,  and  the  types  which  have  disappeared.  But  why 
the  one  set  of  forms  should  have  been  so  repeatedly  called 
into  being,  and  why  the  other  set  should  have  been  suf- 
fered to  become  obsolete,  we  cannot  so  much  as  surmise. 
Why,  it  may  be  asked,  should  the  nautilus  continue  to 
exist,  and  yet  the  ammonite  have  ceased  with  the  ocean 
that  deposited  the  Chalk?  or  why  should  we  have  cuttle- 
fish in  such  abundance,  and  yet  no  belemnites?  or  why 
should  not  the  gryph^a  have  been  reproduced  in  every 
succeeding  period  with  the  oyster?  In  visiting  some  old 
family  library,  that  has  received  no  accessions  to  its  cata- 
logue for  perhaps  more  than  a  century,  one  is  interested  in 
marking  its  more  vivacious  classes  of  works,  —  its  Specta- 
tors, and  Robinson  Crusoes,  and  Shakspeares,  and  Pilgrim's 
Progresses,  —  in  their  first,  or  at  least  earlier  editions, 
ranged  side  by  side  with  obsolete,  long-forgotten  volumes, 
their  contemporaries,  that  died  on  their  first  appearance, 
and  with  whose  unfamiliar  titles  one  cannot  connect  a  sin- 
gle association.  But  it  is  always  easy  to  say  why,  in  the 
race  of  editions,  the  one  class  should  have  been  arrested 
at  the  very  starting  post,  and  why  the  other  should  have 
gone  down  to  be  contemporary  with  every  after  produc- 
tion of  authorship,  until  the  cultivation  of  letters  shall 


372  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

have  ceased.  It  is  otherwise,  however,  with  the  geologist. 
Pie  finds  he  has  exactly  the  same  sort  of  fact  to  deal  with, 
—  an  immense  multiplication  of  editions,  in  the  case  of 
some  particular  type  of  fish,  or  plant,  or  shell,  and,  in  the 
case  of  other  types,  no  after  instances  of  re-publication ;  but 
he  finds  himself  wholly  unable  to  lay  hold  of  any  critical 
canon  through  which  to  determine  why  the  one  class  of 
types  should  have  been  so  often  re-published,  or  the  other 
so  peremptorily  suppressed.  And  yet,  were  all  the  circum- 
stances known,  it  is  possible  that  some  such  canon  might 
be  found  to  exist.  Geology  is  still  in  its  infancy.  Shall  a 
day  ever  arrive  when,  in  a  state  of  full  maturity,  it  will  be 
able  to  appeal  to  its  fixed  canons,  and  to  say  why  one  cer- 
tain type  of  existence  was  fitted  for  but  one  definite  stage 
in  the  progress  of  things,  and  some  other  certain  type 
fitted,  by  a  peculiar  catholicity  of  adaptation,  for  every 
succeeding  period? 

SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER  ON  THE  CUTTLE-FISII  AND  BELEMNITE. 

The  following  discovery  of  Sir  David  Brewster,  regard- 
ing a  marked  peculiarity  of  structure  in  the  eye  of  the 
cuttle-fish,  now  first  made  public,  will  be  deemed  of  great 
interest  by  all  who  have  learned  to  admire  that  inconceiv- 
able variety  of  design  in  the  works  of  the  Infinite  Mind 
which  grows  upon  the  inquirer  the  more  he  examines,  and 
which,  if  man  were  not  immortal,  it  would  be  an  error  of 
his  very  nature  to  have  the  strong  existing  desire  to  exam- 
ine: 

St.  Leonard's  College,  St.  Andrews. 

MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  been  reading,  with  great  pleas- 
ure, your  interesting  account  of  the  cuttle-fish,  and  was 
glad  to  find  that  you  had  noticed  the  singular  structure  of 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  373 

its  eye.  During  the  last  twenty  years  I  have  dissected  lit- 
erally hundreds  of  cuttle-fish  eyes,  but  I  never  published 
my  observations  on  them,  in  consequence  of  having  found 
singular  discrepancies  in  the  eyes  of  different  species,  and 
having  been  always  expecting  from  America  the  eyes  of 
the  remarkable  varieties  which  occur  there,  and  which 
have  been  repeatedly  promised  me  by  American  natur- 
alists. 

As  you  will  take  a  great  interest  in  the  subject^  I  shall 
endeavor  to  give  you  some  idea  of  what  I  have  done. 

Independent  of  the  peculiarity  which  you  have  noticed, 
of  there  being  no  aqueous  chamber  between  the  cornea  and 
the  lens,  there  is  no  iris  and  no  pupil,  the  quantity  of  light 
admitted  being  regulated  by  the  eyelids. 

The  lens  itself  is  of  a  most  singular  description.    It  con- 
sists of  two  lenses  sticking  together,  and  capable  of  being 
separated  without  injuring  either.    This  structure  is  unique. 
The  lens  D  A  E  C  consists  of  two,  D  A 
E,  and  a  meniscus,  m  C  n,  which  is  kept 
close  to  D  A  C  by  a  double  cartilagin- 
ous ring,  D  E.     The  dimensions  are  D 
E  =  0-51  inch,  A  C  =  0-433  inch,  A  B 
=  0-3433  inch,  B  C  =  0-09  inch;  m  n 
=  0-333  inch.     The  outer  diameter  of  the  front  ring,  D  F, 
is  =  0-59  inch,  and  its  inner  diameter  =  0-31  inch. 

In  some  indurated  lenses  I  find  the  lens  C  to  be  doubly 
convex,  and  the  surface  of  the  lens  D  E  A,  on  which  it 
rests,  concave.  This  must  have  been  the  lens  of  a  differ- 
ent species. 

The  fibrous  structure  of  the  lens  is  very  remarkable. 
The  laminae,  or  coats,  of  the  lens  are  parallel  to  D  A  E 
and  m  C  n;  and  the  fibres  of  the  lens  DAE  diverge  from 
A  as  a  pole,  like  the  meridians  of  a  globe ;  and  they  all 

32 


874  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

terminate,  not  in  another  pole,  but  in  the  surface  D  E,  or 
that  which  corresponds  with  in  o  n.  This  termination  of 
the  whole  component  fibres  of  the  lens  D  A  E  in  u  surface 
is  quite  unique,  and  the  mode  of  converting  this  rough 
plane  (like  a  shaving-brush  cut  across),  into  a  smooth  sur- 
face, is  singularly  beautiful.  Each  elementary  coat,  or 
lamina,  being  composed  of  fibres,  has  at  its  termination  in 
the  periphery  D  E  a  sort  of  selvage,  where  all  the  fibres 
end ;  and  these  selvages,  being  circles,  fill  up,  as  it  were, 
or  compose  the  flat  surface  of  the  lens. 

The  coats,  or  laminae,  consist  of  fibres  different  from 
those  of  all  other  animals.  When  other  lenses  harden, 
they  form  a  solid  body,  transparent  like  a  gum ;  but  the 
cuttle-fish  retains  its  laminated  structure,  and  shines  with 
all  the  brilliancy  of  a,  pearl. 

In  the  Scepia  Electona  the  front  lens  A 
separates  from  B  in  the  line  m  a  b  c  n,  a  pe- 
culiarity which  I  have  never  found  in  the 
Scepia  Loligo.  The  diameter  A  B  is  larger 
than  ni  n. 

It  would  be  curious  to  find  the  lenses  in  a 
fossil  state. 

I  have  found  some  lenses  of  the  Scepia 
Loligo  of  a  paraboloidal  form.  It  is  probable  that  the 
form  of  the  lens  varies  with  the  age  of  the  animal. 

When  th,e  lenses  become  indurated,  they  often  exhibit 
the  most  beautiful  internal  reflections,  and  I  have  often 
thought  of  having  them  set  as  brooches.  The  pearly 
structure  is  produced  by  long  exposure  under  ground ; 
and  it  is  almost  impossible  to  distinguish  such  lenses  from 
pearls  when  the  convex  part  only  is  shown.  —  I  am,  my 
dear  Sir,  ever  most  truly  yours, 

D.  BREWSTEE. 

To  Hugh  Miller,  Esq. 


THEORY  OF  THE  OCEAN'S  LEVEL, 

AS  AFFECTED  BY  THE  RISING  OR  SINKING  OF  THE  LAND. 


THE  mean  level  of  the  sea  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  fixed 
line,  unless,  during  the  geologic  changes  of  the  past,  it  has 
invariably  maintained  the  same  distance  from  the  earth's 
centre.  If  the  earth,  in  consequence  of  the  expansive 
influence  of  a  vastly  higher  temperature  than  that  which 
in  the  present  era  it  possesses,  Avas  once  greatly  bulkier 
than  it  is  now,  the  line,  in  proportion  to  the  bulk,  would 
be  farther  removed  than  it  is  now  from  the  centre.  The 
sea  would  stand  greatly  higher  than  at  its  present  line. 
And  who  that  has  surveyed  the  contortions,  the  bends,  the 
inflections,  the  ever-recurring  rises  and  falls,  of  the  more 
ancient  stratified  rocks,  such  as  our  Scotch  grauwacke  for 
instance, — bends  and  inflections  that  forcibly  remind  the 
geologist  of  the  foldings  of  a  loose  robe,  grown  greatly 
too  large  for  the  shrunken  body  which  it  covers,  —  or  that 
has  weighed  the  yet  farther  evidence  furnished  by  the 
carboniferous  vegetation,  extra-tropical  in  character  even 
in  Greenland,  —  who,  I  say,  that  has  considered  this  evi- 
dence will  venture  to  decide  that  the  earth's  temperature 
was  not  higher,  nor  the  earth's  radius  greater,  in  the  days 
of  the  Silurian  period,  or  of  the  Coal  Measures,  than  it  is 
now  ?  And,  of  course,  if  the  earth's  radius  was  greater, 


376  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

the  level  line  of  the  sea  must  have  stood  higher,  —  vastly 
higher,  it  seems  not  impossible,  than  the  line  now  touched 
by  the  summits  of  our  highest  mountains.  Had  there 
been  a  graduated  pole  of  adamant,  equal  in  length  to  the 
radius  of  the  globe,  placed  in  that  ocean  of  the  Silurian 
period  in  which  our  Scotch  graptolites  lived, — «a  pole  with 
its  lower  end  fixed  immovably  at  the  earth's  centre,  and 
its  upper  end  level  with  the  medium  surface  of  the  sen,  — 
where,  I  marvel,  would  that  upper  end  be  now  ?  High,  I 
suspect  in  the  clouds ;  nay,  in  an  attenuated  atmosphere, 
to  which  cloud  never  now  ascends.  The  graduated  mark- 
ings of  the  pole,  indicatory  not  merely  of  how  the  tide, 
but  also  of  how  the  land,  has  fallen,  would,  I  doubt  not, 
be  found  more  conveniently  summable  in  leagues  than  in 
fathoms. 

But  even  setting  aside  all  this  as  fanciful  and  extrava- 
gant,—  even  taking  it  as  a  given  fact  (what,  I  suspect,  is 
no  fact  at  all)  that  the  earth's  bulk  has  not  very  materially 
altered,  the  line  of  the  sea-level  may  have,  notwithstand- 
ing, been  considerably  affected  simply  by  the  rise  of  the 
land.  It  is  estimated  that  about  one-fourth  part  of  the  sur- 
face of  the  globe  is  occupied,  according  to  the  present 
distribution  of  oceans  and  continents,  by  land,  and  the 
remaining  three-fourths  by  water ;  or,  more  correctly,  that 
the  land  is  as  one,  and  the  water  as  2.76.  Let  us  suppose 
this  fourth  part  of  land  annihilated  to  the  mean  depth  of 
the  ocean.  Of  course,  the  effect  would  be,  that  the  ocean, 
having  then  to  cover  four  parts,  instead  of  three,  would 
sink,  all  over  the  globe,  exactly  one-fourth  part  of  its  mean 
depth.  If  the  mean  depth  of  the  ocean  be,  as  has  been 
estimated,  four  miles,  the  fall  in  its  level  that  would  take 
place,  in  consequence  of  this  annihilation  of  the  l:m<1, 
would  be  just  a  single  mile.  And,  of  course,  a  creation 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  377 

of  land  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  which  would  rise  to  its 
surface,  would,  on  the  same  principle,  and  in  exactly  the 
same  ratio,  have  the  effect  of  elevating  the  ocean  level.  It 
would  do  on  a  large  scale  what  the  pebbles  dropped  by 
the  crow  in  the  fable  into  the  pitcher  did  on  a  small  one. 
Nor  must  it  be  forgotten,  that  though  creation  and  anni- 
hilation are  terms  which  may  seem  suggestive  of  the  fan- 
ciful and  the  extravagant,  there  are  phenomena  exceed- 
ingly common  in  nature  which,  for  all  the  purposes  of  my 
argument,  would  have  exactly  the  effect  of  the  things 
which  these  terms  signify.  In  intense  cold,  the  mercury 
in  a  thermometer  is  confined  to  the  bulb  of  the  instru- 
ment; plunged  into  boiling  water,  it  straightway  rises 
two  hundred  and  twelve  degrees  in  the  tube ;  and,  when 
a  second  time  subjected  to  the  intense  cold,  it  sinks  again 
into  the  bulb,  as  at  first.  So  far  as  mere  bulk  is  con- 
cerned, there  takes  place  what  is  analogous  to  a  creation 
and  annihilation  of  the  quantity  of  mercury  in  the  tube. 
Again,  if  a  rod  of  lead  a  mile  in  length  be  raised  in  tem- 
perature from  the  freezing  point  to  the  point  at  which 
water  boils,  it  lengthens  rather  more  than  five  yards;  — 
what  is  equal  to  a  creation  of  five  yards  of  lead-rod  has 
been  effected.  Cooled  down  again,  however,  the  five 
yards  are  annihilated.  A  rod  of  flint-glass  of  the  same 
length,  raised  to  the  same  temperature,  would  stretch  out 
only  four  feet,  two  inches,  and  rather  more  than  seven 
lines.  All  the  metals  —  even  platinum  —  expand  more 
than  glass ;  but  were  there  some  deep-lying  stratum,  five 
miles  in  thickness,  of  that  portion  of  the  earth's  crust  on 
which  Great  Britain  rests,  to  be  heated  two  hundred  and 
twelve  degrees  above  its  present  temperature,  it  would  at 
even  this  comparatively  low  rate  of  expansion  elevate  the 
island  more  than  twenty  feet  higher  than  now  over  the 

32* 


378  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

existing  sea-level,  —  a  height  fully  equal  to  that  of  by  far 
the  best  marked  of  our  ancient  coast  lines.  And  if  this 
increase  in  temperature  took  place,  not  in  a  stratum  of  the 
the  earth's  crust  jive  miles  in  thickness,  underlying  Great 
Britain,  but  in  a  stratum  twenty  miles  in  thickness,  under- 
lying one-fourth  the  area  of  the  bed  of  the  ocean,  the 
effect  would  of  course  be  of  a  reverse  character.  This 
creation  of  land  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea  would  raise  the 
ocean  level  nearly  twenty  feet  all  over  the  globe,  and  send 
the  waves  dashing  around  our  own  shores,  against  the 
ancient  coast  line,  as  of  old. 

Nor  do  I  see  that  the  bearing  of  these  consequences  on 
the  sea-line  —  consequences  that  would  render  its  level 
dependent  on  the  elevation  or  submergence  of  every  con- 
tinent that  has  existed,  or  shall  yet  exist  —  can  be  set 
aside,  save  on  the  supposition  that  for  every  tract  of  land 
that  rises,  another  tract  of  the  same  area  and  cubic  con- 
tents sinks;  or,  to  state  the  case  in  other  words,  and  more 
definitely,  that  for  every  protuberance  formed  within  the 
sea,  there  is  a  corresponding  hollow  formed  al$o  within  it 
elsewhere.  'Now,  even  were  it  to  be  granted  that  for 
every  protuberance  which  rises -on  the  earth's  crust  there 
is  a  corresponding  depression  of  the  surface,  which  takes 
place  somewhere  else  (though  on  what  principle  this  should 
be  granted  is  not  in  the  least  obvious),  I  do  not  at  all  per- 
ceive why  that  depression  should  always  take  place  within 
the  sea.  It  may  take  place,  not  on  any  of  the  parts  of  the 
earth's  surface  covered  by  water,  but  on  that  fourth  part 
occupied  by  land.  It  may  take  place  on  the  table-land  of 
a  continent.  Or,  vice  versa,  a  hollow  formed  in  the  sea, 
considerable  enough  to  lower  the  sea's  level,  may  find  its 
counterbalancing  protuberance  in  the  further  elevation  of 
the  interior  of  some  vast  tract,  such  as  Asia  or  New  Hoi- 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  379 

land,  already  raised  over  the  ocean.  The  submerged  con- 
tinent of  the  Pacific,  which  now  exists  but  as  a  wilderness 
of  scattered  atolls,  may  have  been  the  contemporary  with 
that  of  South  America,  existing  at  the  time  as  a  flat  tract, 
which  simply  occupied  a  certain  area  in  the  sea ;  and  the 
hollow  which  the  submergence  of  the  Polynesian  land 
occasioned  may  .possibly  have  been  balanced  by  the  rise 
of  those  enormous  table-lands  of  Mexico  and  the  adjacent 
countries  that  give  to  the  entire  continent  in  which  they 
are  included  a  mean  elevation  of  more  than  a  thousand 
feet;  or  the  submergence  of  that  Atlantis  which  was 
drained  by  the  great  rivers  of  the  Wealden  period  may 
have  been  balanced,  in  like  manner,  by  the  rise  of  the  still 
more  extensive  table-land  of  Asia :  and  m  both  cases  the 
level  of  the  sea  could  not  fail  to  be  very  sensibly  lowered. 
It  would  have  in  each  instance  the  area  of  the  submerged 
continent  to  occupy ;  and  there  would  be  no  correspond- 
ing elevation  within  its  bed,  to  balance  against  the  waste 
by  the  space  which  it  filled.  But  why,  I  repeat,  the  bal- 
ancing theory  at  all  ?  If  elevations  or  depressions  can,  as 
has  been  shown,  be  mere  results  of  changes  of  tempera- 
ture in  portions  of  the  earth's  crust,  why  deem  it  more 
necessary  to  hold  that  there  is  a  refrigerating  process  tak- 
ing place  under  one  area,  in  the  exact  proportion  in  which 
there  is  a  heating  process  taking  place  under  another,  than 
to  hold  that  when  the  mercury  is  rising  in  the  tube  of  a 
thermometer,  it  is  sinking  in  some  other  tube  attached  to 
the  instrument,  but  not  visible  ?  The  argument,  however, 
is  one  of  those  which  can  be  reasoned  out  more  con- 
clusively by  lines  than  by  words.  It  will  be  found,  too, 
that  the  lines  make  out  not  only  a  more  conclusive,  but 
also  a  stronger  case. 


cso 


DESCRIPTIVE    SKETOJIKS    FROM 

Fig.  II. 


A 


Let  the  line  3,  3,  in  the  diagram,  fig.  I.,  represent  that 
of  the  sea's  mean  level ;  the  line  3  C,  or  3  B,  the  sea's 
mean  depth  ;  the  triangle  B  A  C,  a  rising  continent ;  and 
the  internal  triangles,  whose  apices  reach  the  lines  3,  3, 
and  5,  5,  respectively,  its  comparative  bulk  or  volume  dur- 
ing its  various  intermediate  stages  of  elevation.  When 
the  rising  triangle  (t.  e.  continent)  reaches  the  line  3,  3 
(that  of  the  sea-line  ere  the  land  began  to  rise),  its  mass, 
equal  to  that  of  the  parallelogramic  band  1  B  C  1,  shall 
have  displaced  water  to  that  amount,  and  sent  it  to  the 
surface,  which  shall  have  risen,  in  consequence,  from  the 
line  3,  3,  to  the  line  5,  5.  When  the  continent  reaches 
the  line  5,  5,  there  will  be  another  band,  equal  to  half  the 
mass  of  the  first,  displaced  and  sent  to  the  surface,  which 
shall  now  have  risen  to  the  line  6,  6 ;  and  not  until 
the  point  of  the  triangle  (i.  e.  continent)  has  reached  the 
line  7,  7,  will  it  have  overtaken  the  rising  surface.  Such, 
in  proportion  to  its  bulk,  would  be  the  effect,  on  the  ocean- 
level,  of  a  rising  continent,  were  there  to  be  no  equivalent 
sinking  of  the  surface  elsewhere, — just  as,  when  the  mer- 
cury of  the  thermometer  is  rising  in  the  tube,  there  is  no 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  381 

corresponding  sinking  of  metal  contained  in  the  instru- 
ment elsewhere,  or,  even  if  there  were  an  equivalent  sink- 
ing, were  that  sinking  to  take  place  in  the  interior  of  some 
immense  tract  of  table-land. 

Let  us  now,  however,  turn  to  the  diagram  fig.  II.,  and 
consider  whether  the  full  realization  of  the  fiction  of  sink- 
ing hollows  within  the  sea,  exactly  correspondent  in  their 
cubic  contents  to  the  rising  continents,  would  be  at  all 
adequate  to  preserve  the  hypothetical  fixity  of  ocean  sur- 
face. Let  the  line  B,  C,  fig.  II.  represent  the  bottom  of 
the  ocean,  and  the  triangle  B,  A,  C,  a  depression  of  the 
earth's  crust,  exactly  equal  in  cubic  amount  to  the  rising 
land  in  fig.  I.,  and  taking  place  exactly  at  the  same  time. 
It  will  be  at  once  seen,  in  running  over  the  details,  that 
even  the  hypothesis  of  balancing  hollows  formed  in  the 
sea  as  a  set-off"  against  the  elevations,  is  wholly  insufficient 
to  establish  the  theory  of  a  fixed  line  of  sea-level.  The 
hollow  might  be  formed,  and  yet  the  level  affected  not- 
withstanding. Until  the  elevation  had  risen  above  the 
line  3,  3,  in  the  diagram  fig.  I.,  and  the  corresponding 
hollow  sunk  to  the  line  3,  3,  in  the  diagram  fig.  IL^the 
surface-line  would  remain  unaffected, — the  water  displaced 
by  the  rising  eminence  would  be  contained  in  the  sinking 
hollow ;  but  immediately  as  the  land  rose  over  the  surface, 
there  would  be  a  portion  of  it  —  the  sub-aerial  portion  — 
which  would  displace  no  water.  The  hollow,  if  it  took 
place  in  the  exact  ratio  of  the  elevation,  —  and  such  is  the 
stipulated  condition  of  the  theory,  —  would  receive,  after 
this  point,  exactly  double  the  quantity  of  water  that  the 
land  displaced,  and  the  line  of  the  sea-level  would  fall. 
When  the  elevation  would  have  risen  to  the  point  A  of 
the  one  diagram,  and  the  hollowing  depression  sunk  to  the 
point  A  of  the  other,  the  amount  of  water  received  over 
water  displaced  would  be  equal  in  quantity  to  one  of  the 


882  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

parallelogramio  bands,  1  2,  2  1,  or  2  3,  3  2,  £g.  L;  and  the 
sea-level  would  in  consequence  sink  to  the  line  2,  2.  The 
exactly  balanced  hollow  would  fail  to  preserve  the  balance. 
And  so  I  cannot  continue  to  hold  as  a  first  principle, 
that  the  line  of  the  sea-level  is  a  fixed  and  stable  line ; 
seeing  that  ere  I  could  do  so  I  would  have  to  believe,  first, 
that  the  earth's  radius  has  undergone  no  diminution  since 
the  earliest  geologic  periods  in  which  an  ocean  existed ; 
second,  that  for  every  elevation  which  takes  place  on  the 
surface  of  the  globe  there  takes  place  a  corresponding 
depression  upon  it  elsewhere ;  third,  that  if  the  elevation 
takes  place  within  the  bed  of  the  sea,  the  depression  also 
takes  place  within  the  bed  of  the  sea ;  and,  fourth,  that 
the  elevations  and  depressions  bear  always  a  nicely-adjusted 
proportion  to  each  other  in  their  contents,  —  different  at 
two  different  stages  of  their  formation,  —  being  up  to  a 
certain  point  exactly  as  one  to  one  ;  and  after  that  point 
has  been  reached,  exactly  as  one  to  two.  And  I  can  find 
no  adequate  grounds  for  believing  all  this.  But  though  it 
be  thus  far  from  self-evident  that  the  mean  level  of  the 
ocean  is  a  fixed  line,  its  rises  and  falls  must  have  been 
slight  indeed  compared  with  those  of  the  land.  There 
are  some  of  the  Alps  more  than  fifteen  thousand  feet  in 
height ;  but,  if  spread  equally  over  Europe,  they  would 
raise  the  general  surface,  says  Humboldt,  little  more  than 
twenty-one  feet.  And  the  displaced  masses  of  the  ocean, 
whether  occasioned  by  the  rising  or  the  sinking  of  conti- 
nents, have  always  to  be  spread  over  a  surface  thrice 
greater  than  that  of  all  the  land.  A  displacement,  how- 
ever, effected  by  the  sinking  of  a  continent  which  bore  as 
large  a  proportion  to  the  ocean  as  that  borne  by  the  Alps 
to  Europe,  would  lower  the  general  sea-line  from  the 
mean  level  of  by  far  the  best-marked  of  our  ancient  coast 
lines  to  the  mean  level  of  the  existing  one. 


THE  CHAIN   OF  CAUSES. 


"  IT  is  no  recent  discovery,"  says  an  ingenious  French 
writer  of  the  last  century,  "that  there  is  no  effect  without 
a  cause,  and  that  often  the  smallest  causes  produce  the 
greatest  effects.  Examine  the  situations  of  every  people 
upon  earth  ;  —  they  are  founded  on  a  train  of  occurrences 
seemingly  without  connection,  but  all  connected.  In  this 
immense  machine  all  is  wheel,  pully,  cord,  or  spring.  It  is 
the  same  in  physical  nature.  A  wind  blowing  from  the 
southern  seas  and  the  remotest  parts  of  Africa  brings  with 
it  a  portion  of  the  African  atmosphere,  which,  falling  in 
showers  in  the  valleys  of  the  Alps,  fertilizes  our  lands. 
On  the  other  hand,  our  north  wind  carries  our  vapors 
among  the  negroes :  we  do  good  to  Guinea,  and  Guinea 
to  us.  The  chain  extends  from  one  end  of  the  universe 
to  the  other."  Waiving,  however,  for  the  present,  the 
moral  view  of  the  question,  I  may  be  permitted  to  present 
my  readers  with  an  illustration  of  the  physical  one,  —  i.  e. 
the  dependence  of  the  conditions  of  one  country  on  the 
conditions  on  which  some  other  and  mayhap  very  distant 
country  exists,  —  which  may  be  new  to  some  of  them,  and 
which  the  Frenchman  just  quoted  could  have  little  antici- 
pated. 

When  in  the  island  of  Bute,  to  which  I  had  gone  on 
two  several  occasions  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks,  in 


384  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

order  to  examine  what  are  known  to  geologists  as  the 
Pleistocene  deposits  of  the  Kyles,  my  attention  was  di- 
rected to  a  deep  excavation  which  had  just  been  opened 
for  the  construction  of  a  gas  tank  in  the  middle  of  the 
town  of  Rothesay*  It  was  rather  more  than  twenty  feet 
in  depth,  and  passed  through  five  different  layers  of  soil. 
First,  passing  downwards,  there  occurred  about  eighteen 
inches  of  vegetable  mould,  and  then  about  seven  feet  of  a 
partially  consolidated  ferruginous  gravel,  Which  rested  on 
about  eighteen  inches  more  of  peat  moss, — once  evidently 
a  surface  soil,  like  the  overlying  one,  though  of  a  different 
character,  —  abounding  in  what  seemed  to  be  the  frag- 
ments of  a  rank  underwood,  and  containing  many  hazel- 
nuts.  Beneath  this  second  soil  there  lay  fully  nine  feet  of 
finely  stratified  sea-sand ;  and  under  all,  a  bed  of  arena- 
ceous clay,  which  the  workmen  penetrated  to  the  depth 
of  about  two  feet,  but,  as  they  had  attained  to  the  required 
depth  of  their  excavation,  did  not  pass  through.  And  this 
bed  of  clay,  at  the  depth  of  fully  twenty  feet  from  the 
surface,  abounded  in  sea-shells,  —  not  existing  in  the  petri- 
fied condition,  but,  save  that  they  had  become  somewhat 
porous  and  absorbent,  in  their  original  state.  Not  a  few 
of  them  retained  the  thin  brown  epidermis,  unchanged  in 
color ;  and  the  gaping  and  boring  shells,  whose  nature  it 
is  to  burrow  in  clay  and  sand,  and  which  were  present 
among  them  in  two  well-marked  species,  occupied,  as 
shown  by  their  position,  the  place  in  which  they  had 
lived  and  died.  Now,  of  these  ancient  deep-lying  shells, 
though  a  certain  portion  of  them  could  be  recognized  as 
still  British,  there  were  proportionally  not  a  few  that  no 
longer  live  within  the  British  area;  —  in  vain  might  the 
conchologist  cast  dredge  for  them  in  any  sea  that  girdles 
the  three  kingdoms ;  and  the  whole,  regarded  as  a  group, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  385 

differ  from  any  other  that  exists  in  Europe  in  the  present 
day.  Ere,  however,  I  pass  on  to  decipher  the  record 
which  they  form,  or  translate  into  words  the  strange  old 
pre-historic  facts  with  which  they  are  charged,  let  me 
briefly  refer  to  the  overlying  deposits,  and  the  successive 
periods  of  time  which  they  seem  to  represent. 

The  upper  layer  of  vegetable  mould  here  fully  exhausts 
the  historic  period.  And  yet  the  fine  old  town  of  Rothe- 
say  is  not  without  its  history.  The  ancient  ivy-clad  castle 
of  the  place  is  situated  scarce  a  minute's  walk  from  the 
excavation ;  the  same  stratum  of  vegetable  mould  lies 
around  that  forms  the  upper  layer  in  the  pit,  furnishing 
rich  footing  to  shrub  and  tree ;  and  its  great  moat,  de- 
serted long  since  by  the  waters,  was  excavated  of  old  in 
the  ferruginous  gravel.  And  yet,  though  compared  with 
the  age  of  the  gravel-bed  on  which  it  stands,  the  date  of 
its  erection  is  as  of  yesterday:  history  fails  to  trace  its 
origin ;  we  only  know  that  it  was  already  an  important 
stronghold  in  the  days  of  Haco  of  Norway,  one  of  whose 
captains  besieged  and  took  it,  —  that  Robert  III.  of  Scot- 
land died  broken-hearted  within  its  walls,  —  and  that  it 
still  furnishes  with  his  second  title  the  heir-apparent  of  the 
British  throne.  On  many  other  parts  of  the  coast,  though 
apparently  not  here,  this  gravel-bed  contains  shells,  all  of 
which,  unlike  those  of  the  arenaceous  clay  beneath,  still 
live  around  our  shores,  and  most  of  which  occurred,  ere  the 
last  upheaval  of  the  land,  as  dead  shells  on  the  beaches  of 
the  old  coast  line.  The  old  line  itself,  against  which  the 
sea  seems  to  have  stood  for  ages  ere  the  final  upheaval,  is 
present  here  immediately  behind  the  town,  in  an  emi- 
nently characteristic  form.  Its  precipices  of  rough  con- 
glomerate still  exhibit  the  hollow  lines,  worn  of  old  by 
the  surf,  and  occupy  such  places  in  relation  to  the  build- 

33 


380  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

ings  below  as  prove  that  even  the  oldest  erections  of  the 
town,  with  the  first  beginnings  of  the  castle,  were  all  raised 
on  one  of  its  wave-deserted  beaches.  But  the  annals  of 
Rothesay,  notwithstanding  their  respectable  antiquity,  or 
even  such  memorials  of  human  origin  in  the  neighborhood 
as  altogether  extend  beyond  the  memory  of  history,  ad- 
vance but  comparatively  a  little  way  towards  the  period 
of  the  old  coast  line  and  the  last  upheaval.  When,  in  the 
times  of  Julius  Caesar,  Diodorus  Siculus  wrote  his  big  gos- 
sipping  history,  St.  Michael's  Mount,  in  Cornwall,  was  con- 
nected with  the  mainland  at  low  water  as  it  is  now,  —  a 
fact  good  in  evidence  to  show  that  since  that  age  the 
respective  levels  of  land  and  water  have  not  altered  in 
Britain.  The  old  coast  line  must  have  been  already 
upheaved  when  Ca3sar  landed  in  the  island.  And  yet, 
though,  as  shown  by  its  profound  caves  and  deeply  ex- 
cavated hollows,  the  sea  must  have  beaten  against  it  dur- 
ing an  immensely  protracted  period  of  depression,  there 
existed  a  previous  period  of  upheaval,  represented  by  the 
layer  of  moss  at  the  bottom  of  the  gravel,  when  the  land 
must  have  stood,  considerably  higher  over  the  sea-level 
than  it  does  now.  In  many  localities  around  the  shores 
of  Britain  and  Ireland,  the  moss-bed  which  so  often  under- 
lies the  bed  of  old  coast  gravel  is  found  to  run  out  under 
the  sea  to  depths  never  laid  bare  by  the  tide ;  and  yet,  at 
least  as  low  as  the  sea  ever  falls,  it  is  found  bearing  its 
stumps  and  roots  of  bushes  and  trees  of  existing  species, 
that  evidently  occupy  the  place  in  which  they  had  origi- 
nally grown  and  decayed.  These  submerged  mosses,  as 
they  are  termed,  occur  along  the  sides  of  the  Friths  of 
Tay  and  Forth,  and  in  at  least  one  locality  on  the  southern 
side  of  Moray  Frith ;  on  the  west  coast  they  lie  deep  in 
lochs  and  bays  ;  they  occur  on  various  ports  of  the  coasts 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  387 

of  Ireland  ;  and  off  the  shores  of  .Erris  and  Tyraw/y  have 
furnished  a  basis  for  strange  legends  regarding  an  en- 
chanted land,  which  once  in  every  seven  years  raises  its 
head  above  the  water,  green  with  forests  and  fields,  but 
on  which  scarce  any  one  has  succeeded  in  landing.  They 
occur  also  on  the  English  shores,  in  one  interesting  in- 
stance in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  that  St.  Michael's 
Mount  which,  from  the  description  of  the  Sicilian  historian, 
furnishes  a  sort  of  negative  measure  of  the  period  during 
which  the  gravel  bed  immediately  over  them  was  elevated. 
"On  the  strand  of  Mount's  Bay,  midway  between  the  piers 
of  St.  Michael's  Mount  and  Penzance,  on  the  10th  of  Jan- 
uary, 1757,"  says  Borlase,  in  his  "Natural  History  of  Corn- 
wall," "  the  remains  of  a  wood,  which  anciently  must  have 
covered  a  large  tract  of  ground,  appeared.  The  sands  had 
been  drawn  off  from  the  shore  by  a  violent  sea,  and  had 
left  several  places,  twenty  yards  long  and  ten  wide,  washed 
bare,  strewed  with  stones  like  a  broken  causeway,  and 
wrought  into  hollows  somewhat  below  the  rest  of  the 
sands.  This  gave  me  an  opportunity  of  examining  the 
following  parts  of  the  ancient  trees :  —  In  the  first  pool 
part  of  the  trunk  appeared,  and  the  roots  in  their  whole 
course,  eighteen  feet  long  and  twelve  wide,  were  displayed 
in  a  horizontal  position.  The  trunk  at  the  iracture  was 
ragged ;  and  beside  the  level  range  of  the  roots  which  lay 
round  it  was  part  of  the  body  of  the  tree,  just  above 
where  the  roots  divided.  Of  what  kind  it  was  there  did 
not  remain  enough  positively  to  determine.  The  roots 
were  pierced  plentifully  by  the  teredo  or  auger  worm. 
Thirty  feet  to  the  west  we  found  the  remains  of  another 
tree :  the  ramifications  extended  ten  feet  by  six ;  there 
was  no  stock  in  the  middle ;  it  was  therefore  part  of  the 
under  or  bottom  roots  of  the  tree,  pierced  also  by  the 


388  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

teredo,  and  of  the  same  texture  as  the  first.  Fifty  feet  to 
the  north  of  the  first  tree  we  found  part  of  a  large  oak :  it 
was  the  body  of  a  tree  three  feet  in  diameter ;  its  top  in- 
clined to  the  east.  "We  traced  the  body  of  this  tree,  as  it 
lay  shelving,  the  length  of  seven  feet ;  but  to  what  further 
depth  the  body  reached  we  could  not  discern,  because  of 
the  immediate  influx  of  water  as  soon  as  we  had  made  a 
pit  for  discovery.  It  was  firmly  rooted  in  earth  six  inches 
from  the  surface  of  the  sand.  Not  so  fixed  was  the  stock 
of  a  willow  tree,  with  the  bark  on,  one  foot  and  a  half  in 
diameter,  within  two  paces  of  the  oak.  The  timber  was 
changed  into  a  ruddy  color ;  and  hard  by  we  found  part 
of  a  hazel-branch,  with  its  glossy  bark  on.  The  earth  in 
all  the  tried  places  appeared  to  be  a  black,  cold  marsh, 
filled  with  fragments  of  leaves  of  the  Juncits  aquaticus 
maximus.  The  place  where  I  found  the  ti-ees  was  three 
hundred  yards  below  full  sea-mark.  The  water  is  twelve 
feet  deep  upon  them  when  the  tide  is  in."  It  will  be  seen 
from  this  description,  —  and  it  agrees  with  that  of  our 
submerged  forests  of  the  period  generally,  —  that  the  trees 
which  grew  on  this  nether  soil,  when  the  level  of  the  land 
stood  considerably  higher  than  it  does  now,  were  exactly 
those  of  our  present  climate,  —  a  fact  borne  specially  out 
by  the  numerous  hazel-nuts  which  the  deposit  almost 
everywhere  contains.  The  hazel  is  one  of  the  more  deli- 
cate indigenous  trees  of  the  country.  It  was  long  ago 
remarked  in  Scotland  by  intelligent  farmers  of  the  old 
school,  that  "a  good  nut  year  was  always  a  good  oat  year;" 
and  that  "  as  the  nut  filled  the  oat  filled."  And  now  our 
philosophical  botanists  confirm  the  truthfulness  of  the  ob- 
servation embodied  in  these  proverbial  sayings,  by  select- 
ing the  hazel  as  the  indigenous  plant  which  most  nearly 
resembles  in  its  constitution  the  hardier  cerer.is.  It  rises 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  389 

on  our  hill-sides  to  the  height,  but  no  higher,  to  which 
cultivation  extends ;  and  where  the  hazel  would  fail  to 
grow,  checked  by  the  severity  of  the  climate,  it  would  be 
in  vain  to  attempt  rearing  the  oat,  or  to  expect  any  very 
considerable  return  from  either  rye  or  barley.  The  exis- 
tence of  hazel-nuts,  then,  in  this  mossy  stratum,  is  fraught 
with  exactly  the  same  sort  of  evidence  regarding  the  cli- 
mate of  that  period  of  upheaval  which  it  represents,  as 
that  borne  by  the  shells  of  the  overlying  gravel  to  the 
subsequent  period  when  the  sea  stood  against  the  old 
coast  line.  Equally  during  both  periods  our  country  pos- 
sessed its  present  comparatively  genial  climate, — the  finest 
enjoyed  by  any  country  in  the  world  situated  under  the 
same  latitudinal  lines.  But  the  bed  beneath  gives  evi- 
dence of  an  entirely  different  state  of  things. 

Under  the  stratum  of  moss,  as  we  have  already  said, 
there  occurs  in  the  Rothesay  pit  a  thick  bed  of  stratified 
sea-sand,  and  under  the  sand  a  bed  of  clay  charged  with 
shells ;  and  these  shells  exist  no  longer  as  a  group  in  the 
British  seas.  Regarded  as  characters  charged  with  the 
climatal  history  of  the  period  that  represents  the  stratum 
in  which  they  occur,  the  following  list,  with  the  attached 
explanations,  may  be  regarded  as  indicative  of  the  mean- 
ings which  they  bear.  We  may  mention,  that  the  greater 
number  of  the  specimens  specified  were  collected  in  the 
pit  after  our  first  visit  to  it,  by  Mr.  John  Richmond  of  the 
Temperance  Hotel,  Rothesay,  to  whose  intelligent  guidance 
and  direction  the  geologic  traveller,  desirous  of  cultivating 
an  adequate  acquaintance  with  the  Pleistocene  deposits  of 
the  island  in  the  least  possible  time,  would  do  well  to  com- 
mit himself. 

33* 


390 


DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 


Nutica  clausa, 

Trophon  scalar! forme, 
Buccinum  Humphrey sianum, 

Trochus  wjlatus, 

Undescribed  natica, 
Trophon  datliratus, 
Littorina  rudis, 
Tdlina  proximo., 


Saxicava  sulcata, 
Mya  Uddevallensis, 


Undescribed  inodiola, 


Mya  truncata, 
Saxicava  rugosa, 
Lucina  flexuosa, 
Asturte  compressa, 
Nucula  Nucleus, 


Not  now  a  British  species,  but  found  living 
in  the  North  Sea  as  far  as  Spit/bergen, 
and  on  the  shores  of  boreal  America. 

Not  now  British,  but  living  in  the  samo 
boreal  seas  as  the  other. 

One  of  the  rarest  of  British  shells.  "  It 
appears,"  say  Messrs.  Forbes  &  Hanlcy 
in  thtir  history  of  the  British  Mollusca, 
"to  be  an  arctic  form  lingering  in  our 
fauna." 

Not  now  British;  existing  habitat  unascer- 
tained. 

Ditto :  ditto. 

British ;  but  also  boreal. 

Ditto :  ditto. 

Not  yet  found  living  in  the  British  area, 
but  abundant  on  the  coasts  of  Greenland, 
boreal  America,  etc. 

Not  now  British. 

Now  deemed  a  variety  of  Myatnmcata,  but, 
save  that  it  was  found  in  one  instance  by 
Dr.  Fleming  among  the  Shetland  Islands, 
not  a  British,  but  a  boreal  variety. 

Not  now  British :  existing  habitat  unascer- 
tained. 


British;  but  also  boreal. 


Such  were  the  shells  found  in  the  arenaceous  clay-bed 
of  the  Rothesay  pit, full  twenty  feet  from  the  surface;  and 
from  where,  in  various  other  parts  of  the  country,  the 
same  bed  has  been  reached  by  excavations,  or  found  crop- 
ping out  along  the  shores,  the  list  has  been  greatly  in- 
creased. At  Balnakaille  Bay,  for  instance,  in  the  Kyles 
of  Bute,  where  Mr.  '  Smith  of  Jordanhill,  —  one  of  our 
authorities  on  the  Pleistocene  formation, —  first  de- 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  391 

tected  the  deposit,  we  found  several  specimens  of  the  Pec- 
ten  Islandicus,  —  a  fine  shell,  which,  thoiigh  abundant  on 
the  coast  of  Labrador,  has  not  been  found  living  on  those 

'  O 

of  Britain ;  with  specimens  of  Panopea  N~orwegica,  —  a 
massive  shell,  of  the  same  boreal  character,  recently,  how- 
ever, found  on  our  coast ;  though  such  its  extreme  rarity, 
that  a  conchological  friend  tells  us  he  was  lately  offered  a 
British  specimen  for  sale,  at  the  not  very  moderate  price 
of  two  pounds  ten  shillings.  Even  in  the  instance  in 
which  the  shells  are  not  only  British,  but  also  not  of  ex- 
treme rarity,  the  proportions  in  which  they  occur  in  the 
beds  are  certainly  exotic.  Astarte  elliptica,  for  instance, 
is  by  no  means  a  common  Astarte  in  the  Scottish  seas,  nor 
is  it  all  known  in  those  of  England  or  Ireland ;  whereas 
in  Greenland  it  is  very  abundant ;  and  in  those  beds  in 
which  it  is  the  prevailing  Astarte,  it  is  in  the  Greenlandic, 
not  in  the  Scottish  proportions,  in  which  it  occurs.  In 
the  same  way  Cyprina  Islandica^  though  comparatively 
rare  in  the  Frith  of  Clyde,  is  not  rare  in  the  Scottish  seas 
generally ;  but  it  is  in  the  seas  of  Iceland,  as  its  name  im- 
plies, that  it  attains  to  its  fullest  numerical  development ; 
and  in  the  Pleistocene  beds  of  the  Clyde  it  is  in  the  Ice- 
landic, not  the  Scottish  proportions,  that  we  find  it.  The 
same  remark  applies  to  Cardium  Norwegica  and  Astarte 
compressci)  with  not  a  few  others ;  and  still  more  strongly 
to  another  Astarte,  not  rare  in  the  Pleistocene  deposits  of 
at  least  Banffshire  and  Caithness,  but  so  exceedingly  rare 
as  Scottish  in  the  present  age  of  the  world,  that  the  late 
Professor  Edward  Forbes,  —  indefatigable  dredger  as  he 
was,  —  had  to  borrow  from  a  friend  the  Scottish  specimen 
which  he  figures  in  his  great  work.  But  though  of  such 
unfrequent  occurrence  in  the  Scottish  seas,  it  is  common 
in  those  of  Nova  Zembla  and  within  the  Arctic  circle; 


392  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

and  it  is  in  the  proportions  in  which  it  is  developed  in  the 
high  latitudes  that  we  now  find  it  in  the  Pleistocene  beds 
of  Scotland. 

But  how  interpret  so  curious  a  fact  as  the  occurrence  in 
this  country  of  beds  of  shells  (evidently  occupying  the 
place  in  which  they  had  lived  and  died)  whose  proper  cli- 
inatal  habitat  is  now  some  ten  or  fifteen  degrees  farther  to 
the  north  ?  There  is  nothing  more  fixed  than  the  nature 
of  species.  Art,  within  certain  limits  exerts  an  acclimatiz- 
ing power ;  Alpine  plants  may  be  found,  for  instance,  liv- 
ing, if  not  flourishing,  within  the  Botanic  Gardens  of 
Edinburgh,  elevated  scarce  a  hundred  feet  above  the  level 
of  the  sea ;  but  every  scientific  gardener  knows  how  ex- 
tremely difficult  it  is  to  keep  those  alive  in  the  too  genial 
temperature  of  situation  greatly  lower  than  the  one  natu- 
ral to  them ;  and  that  while  intertropical  plants  may  be 
easily  maintained  in  existence  through  the  judicious  appli- 
cation of  artificial  heat,  the  sub-arctic  or  Alpine  plants  are 
ever  and  anon  dying  out.  And  never  do  they  so  change 
their  natures  as  of  themselves  to  propagate  their  kind  down- 
wards from  the  hill-tops  to  the  plains.  They  on  no  occa- 
sion violate  the  climatal  conditions  imposed  upon  them  by 
nature.  It  is  so  also  with  the  animal  world,  and  especially 
with  shells.  There  are  shells  reckoned  British,  so  deli- 
cately sensible  of  cold,  that  their  northern  limit  barely 
touches  the  southern  shores  of  Britain.  That  fine  bivalve 
Cytherea  chione  is  one  of  these,  never  getting  farther  north 
than  Caernavon  Bay;  Cardium  rusticum,  so  graphically 
described  by  Mr.  Kingsley  in  his  "  Glaucus,"  under  the 
style  and  title  of  Signer  Tuberculato,  is  another,  rang- 
ing southward  to  the  Canaries,  but  barely  impinging,  in 
its  northern  limits,  on  the  shores  of  Devon  and  Cornwall ; 
and  our  splendid  Haliotus,  or  ear-shell,  H.  tubercidata, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  393 

though  reckoned  British  by  courtesy,  does  not  even  touch 
the  British  shores,  but  finds  its  northern  limit  at  the  Chan- 
nel Islands.  Nor  are  the  northern  shells  more  tolerant  of 
warm  than  the  southern  ones  of  cold  water.  We  have 
already  referred  to  A.stavte  ettiptica  as  finding  its  southern 
line  of  boundary  on  the  Scottish  coasts;  Pecten  N-iveus 
has  not  occurred  to  the  south  of  the  Frith  of  Clyde  ;  and 
Trochus  undulatus,  though  it  ranges  to  Greenland,  barely 
reaches  our  northern  and  western  shores.  Such  and  so 
nice  is  the  dependence  of  shells  on  conditions  of  tempera- 
ture, and  such  and  so  nice  is  their  restriction  to  climatal 
areas.  IsTor  could  they  have  had  a  different  nature  in  the 
past.  How,  then  could  the  cold  Natica  clausa  and  Tro- 
phon  scalariforme  of  Spitzbergen  and  boreal  America,  and 
the  Tellin<(  proximo,  and  Mya  UcMevallensis  of  Greenland 
and  the  North  Cape,  have  been  at  one  time  living  deni-. 
zens  of  the  bay  of  Rothesay?  Under  what  strange  cir- 
cumstances could  whole  scalps  of  the  JPecten  Islandicus 
have  thriven  in  the  Kyles  of  Bute,  accompanied  by  groups 
of  boreal  Saxicava,  that  dug  themselves  houses  in  the 
stiff  clay,  and  massive  Panopea,  that  burrowed  in  the 
mud  ?  The  island  of  Bute  is  famous  for  now  possessing 
perhaps  the  finest  climate  in  Scotland ;  exotics  blow  in  its 
gardens  and  shrubberies,  that  demand  elsewhere  the  shel- 
ter of  a  greenhouse ;  and  yet  there  was  a  time  when, 
judging  from  the  extreme  boreal  character  of  its  shells,  it 
pined  under  a  severe  and  ungenial  climate,  in  which  even 
the  hardier  cereals  could  not  have  ripened.  How  account 
for  a  state  of  things  so  very  unlike  the  present  ? 

Questions  in  natural  science  cannot  be  resolved  with  all 
the  certainty  of  questions  in  astronomical  or  mathematical 
science.  Adams  and  Le  Verrier  could  not  only  infer  from 
the  disturbances  of  Uranus  the  existence  of  a  hitherto  un- 


£94  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

known  planet,  but  even  indicate  its  place  in  the  heaven*. 
But  though  the  varying  climatal  circumstances  of  our 
country,  and  of  northern  Europe  generally,  seem  to  have 
depended  scarce  less  surely  on  the  varying  physical  condi- 
tions of  another  country  three  thousand  miles  away,  than 
the  irregularities  of  the  planet  Uranus  did  upon  the  mass 
and  position  of  the  planet  Neptune,  we  question  whether 
any  amount  of  skill,  or  intimacy  of  acquaintance  with  the 
phenomena,  could  have  led  to  an  a  priori  anticipation  of 
the  fact.  We  shall  afterwards  show,  however,  that  the  cli- 
mate of  northern  Europe  is  mainly  dependent  on  the  condi- 
tions of  northern  America ;  and  that  one  certain  change  in 
its  condition  gave  to  our  country  the  severe  climate  which 
obtained  when  Natica  clausa  and  Tellina  proximo,  lived 
in  the  bay  of  Rothesay;  and  that  it  is  a  result  of  another 
certain  change  in  its  condition,  that  the  delicate  fuschia 
now  expands  its  purple  bells  in  Bute  on  the  soil  by  which 
great  deep-lying  accumulations  of  these  sub-arctic  shells 
are  covered. 

Let  us  first  remark,  that  during  the  period  of  the  boreal 
shells  the  land  was  greatly  depressed.  The  subsequent  de- 
pression —  that  represented  in  the  Rothesay  excavation  by 
the  upper  gravel-bed,  —  that  which  succeeded  the  age  of 
the  submerged  mosses,  —  that  during  which  the  waves 
broke  against  the  old  coast  line,  —  seems  to  have  been 
restricted  to  a  descent  of  some  thirty,  or  at  most  forty,  feet 
beneath  the  level  which  the  land  at  present  maintains; 
whereas  the  previous  depression  —  that  represented  by  the 
bed  of  arenaceous  clay  and  the  boreal  shells  —  must  have 
been  a  depression  of  many  hundred  feet.  No  such  infer- 
ence, however,  could  be  based  on  any  of  the  Bute  deposits 
which  we  have  yet  seen  ;  and  yet  we  might  safely  con- 
clude, even  from  them,  that  when  the  deep-sea  shells  lived 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  805 

where  we  now  find  them,  the  land  must  have  sat  compar- 
atively low  in  the  water.  When  scalps  of  Pecten  Island- 
icus  throve  on  the  argillaceous  bed  cut  open  above  tide- 
mark  by  the  little  stream  which  falls  into  Balnakaillie  Bay, 
and  noble  Panopea  burrowed  in  its  stiff  clay,  Bute  must 
have  existed,  not  as  one,  but  as  three  islands,  separated 
from  each  other  by  ocean  sounds  occupying  the  three  val- 
leys by  which  it  is  still  traversed  from  side  to  side.  In  the 
neighboring  mainland  many  a  promontory  and  peninsula 
must  have  also  existed  as  detached  islands.  The  long 
promontory  of  Cantyre  and  Knapdale,  traversed  by  open 
sounds  at  Tarbert  and  Crinan,  must  have  formed  two  of 
these ;  the  larger  part  of  the  shire  of  Dumbarton,  cut  off 
from  the  main  land  by  straits  passing  inwards  through  the 
valleys  of  the  Leven  and  of  Loch  Long,  must  also  have 
borne  an  insular  character;  Loch  Lomond  must  have  ex- 
isted, not  as  a  fresh-water  lake,  but  as  an  interior  sea; 
and,  in  fine,  the  whole  geography  of  the  British  islands 
must  have  been  widely  different  from  what  it  is  now. 
There  are  other  localities,  however,  in  which,  from  the  ele- 
vation of  the  boreal  shell-bed  over  the  present  sea-level, 
we  are  justified  in  inferring  that  the  depression  of  the  land 
must  have  been  much  greater  than  that  indicated  by  the 
beds  of  Bute.  The  same  bed,  and  containing  the  same 
shells,  was  laid  open  in  forming  the  Glasgow  and  Greenock 
Railway,  a  little  to  the  west  of  Port  Glasgow,  at  an  eleva- 
tion of  about  fifty  feet  over  the  high-water  line.  It  was 
detected  at  Airdrie,  about  fifteen  miles  inland,  in  the  first 
instance,  at  a  height  of  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet  over 
the  sea,  and  subsequently  at  the  still  more  considerable 
height  of  five  hundred  and  twenty-four  feet.  We  our- 
selves have  disinterred  the  same  shells  from  where  they 
rested,  evidently  in  situ,  in  Banffshire,  —  on  the  top,  in 


£90  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

one  instance,  of  a  giddy  cliff,  elevated  two  hundred  and 
thirty  feet  over  the  beach,  —  in  another,  lying  deep  in  the 
side  of  a  valley  once  a  long  withdrawing  frith,  but  now 
fully  six  miles  from  the  sea,  and  raised  about  a  hundred 
and  fifty  feet  above  it.  In  Caithness  they  have  been  de- 
tected by  Mr.  Robert  Dick  at  the  greatest  heights  to  which 
the  boulder-clay  attains;  they  occur  also  at  very  consider- 
able heights  in  the  boulder-clay  of  the  Isle  of  Man  ;  and 
were  found  by  Mr.  Trimmer  in  the  drift  of  Moel  Tryfon, 
in  North  Wales,  at  the  extraordinary  elevation  over  the 
sea  of  fifteen  hundred  feet.  When  the  boreal  shells  at 
Airdrie  lived,  Scotland  must  have  existed  as  a  wintry  archi- 
pelago, separated  into  three  groups  by  the  oceanic  sounds 
of  the  great  Caledonian  Valley,  and  of  the  low  flat  valley, 
now  traversed  by  the  Union  Canal,  which  extends  between 
the  Friths  of  Forth  and  Clyde.  And  when  the  shells  of 
Moel  Tryfon  lived,  only  the  higher  parts  of  the  Highlands 
of  Scotland,  and  of  the  Cheviot  and  Lammermoor  groups, 
could  have  had  their  heads  elevated  over  the  wintry  ice- 
laden  seas  of  the  Pleistocene  ages.  There  are  grounds  for 
holding  that  the  period,  though  one  geologically,  was  of 
vast  extent,  —  that  the  degree  of  submergence  was  greater 
at  one  time  and  less  at  another ;  or,  more  strictly  speaking, 
that  the  commencement  of  the  period  was  one  of  grad- 
ual depression  in  the  British  area,  —  that  about  its  mid- 
dle term  all  was  submerged,  save  the  hill-tops  and  higher 
table-lands,  —  and  that  our  countiy  then  began  gradually 
to  rise,  until,  about  the  close  of  the  wintry  eon,  its  level 
was  mayhap  scarce  a  hundred  feet  lower  than  it  is  at 
present.  But  though  comparatively  greater  and  less  at 
different  times,  there  seems  to  have  been  no  time  during 
the  period,  in  which  the  depression  was  not  absolutely 
great. 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  397 

« 

Let  us  next  remark,  as  very  important  to  our  argument, 
that  not  only  was  the  period  one  of  depression  in  the  Brit- 
ish area,  but  also  very  extensively  in  the  northern  hemi- 
sphere generally.  The  shell-beds  of  TJddevalla  —  identi- 
cal in  the  character  and  species  of  their  organisms  with 
those  of  the  Clyde  —  are  elevated  two  hundred  feet  above 
the  neighboring  Cattegat;  and  in  Russia  Sir  Roderick 
Murchison  detected  similar  beds  in  the  valley  of  the  Dwina, 
lying  nearly  two  hundred  miles  south-east  of  Archangel, 
and  at  least  a  hundred  and  fifty  feet  over  the  level  of  the 
White  Sea.  It  is  not  uninteresting  to  mark,  in  the  list  of 
shells  given  by  Sir  Roderick  in  his  great  work  on  Russia, 
and  which  were  the  product,  he  states,  of  not  more  than 
two  hours'  exploration  among  these  far  inland  beds,  exactly 
the  names  of  the  same  species  that  occurred  in  the  Rothe- 
say  excavation,  or  may  be  found  in  the  Pleistocene  depos- 
its of  the  Kyles.  We  recognize  as  the  prevailing  forms, 
Ncitica  clausa,  Pecten  Islandicus^  Astarte  elliptica,  As- 
tarte  compressa,  Mya  truncata  in  both  its  boreal  and  more 
ordinary  varieties,  and  Tellina  proximo,,  with  many  others. 
The  inscriptions  borne  by  the  Pleistocene  of  both  Sweden 
and  Russia  are  formed  of  the  same  character  as  those  ex- 
hibited by  the  Pleistocene  of  our  own  country,  and  tell 
exactly  the  same  story.  But  it  is  of  still  more  importance 
to  our  argument,  that  the  Pleistocene  of  America  is  also 
inscribed  with  similar  characters,  and  is  coupled  with  sim- 
ilar evidence.  Shell-beds  identical  in  their  contents  with 
those  of  the  Clyde,  Udde valla,  and  the  valley  of  the 
Dwina,  have  been  detected  in  the  neighborhood  of  Que- 
bec, at  the  height  of  two  hundred  feet  over  the  Atlantic, 
and  traced  onwards  by  Mr.  Logan,  the  accomplished  state- 
geologist  for  the  Canadas,  to  the  height  of  four  hundred 
and  sixty  feet.  And  in  these  American  beds,  separated 

34 


398  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

from  those  of  the  Dwina  by  a  hundred  and  twenty  degrees 
of  longitude,  Pecten  Islandicus,  Natica  clausa,  Mya  trun- 
cata,  Saxicava  rugosa,  and  Tellina  proxima,  are  the  pre- 
vailing forms.  How  very  wide  the  geographic  area  which 
these  shells  must  have  possessed  of  old !  A  depression  of 
the  North  American  Continent  to  the  amount  of  but  four 
hundred  and  sixty  feet  would  greatly  affect  its  contour. 
It  would  cut  it  off  from  South  America  (the  highest 
point  over  which  the  Panama  Railway  passed  was  but  two 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  over  the  level  of  the  sea),  and 
unite  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  Oceans  by  a  broad  channel, 
more  than  thirty  fathoms  in  depth.  But  from  various 
other  appearances  the  American  geologists  claim  for  their 
country  a  much  greater  depression  than  even  that  of  Moel 
Try fon  in  Wales.  It  must  have  been  depressed  at  least  two 
thousand  feet,  and  a  wide  sea  must  have  passed  through 
the  valley  of  the  Mississippi  into  what  is  now  the  Lake  dis- 
trict, and  from  thence  into  Hudson's  Bay  and  the  Arctic 
Seas.  And  now,  let  the  reader  mark  the  probable  effects 
on  the  climate  of  Northern  Europe  generally,  and  on  that 
of  Britain  in  particular,  of  so  extensive  a  submergence  of 
the  American  Continent. 

No  other  countries  in  the  world  situated  under  the  same 
lines  of  latitude  enjoy  so  genial  a  climate  as  that  enjoyed 
by  the  British  islands  in  the,  present  day.  The  bleak 
coasts  of  Labrador  lie  in  the  same  parallels  as  those  of 
Britain  and  Ireland ;  St.  John's,  in  Newfoundland,  is  situ- 
ated considerably  to  the  south  of  Torquay  in  Devon ;  and 
Cape  Farewell,  in  Greenland,  to  the  south  of  Kirkwall, 
the  capital  of  the  Shetland  Islands.  But  how  very  differ- 
ent the  climate  of  these  bleak  occidental  lands,  from  that 
which  renders  Great  Britain  one  of  the  first  of  agricul- 
tural countries !  At  Nain,  in  Labrador,  situated  in  the 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  399 

same  latitude  as  Edinburgh,  the  ground  frost  at  the  depth 
of  a  few  feet  from  the  surface  never  thaws,  but  forms  an 
ungenial  rock-like  subsoil,  against  which  the  laborer  breaks 
his  tool,  and  over  which  the  cereals  fail  to  ripen.  From 
the  northern  coasts  of  Newfoundland,  though  lying  under 
the  same  latitudinal  lines  as  the  extreme  south  of  England, 
there  forms  in  winter  a  thick  cake  of  ice,  which,  binding 
up  the  stormy  sea,  runs  northwards  and  eastwards,  and 
connects,  as  with  a  long  bridge,  the  north  of  Iceland  with 
the  north  of  Newfoundland;  thus  constituting  a  natural 
isothermal  line,  which  shows  that  the  European  island  has 
a  not  severer  climate  than  the  American  one,  though  it 
lies  more  than  ten  degrees  farther  to  the  north.  And  be 
it  remembered  that,  did  climate  depend  exclusively  on  a 
country's  latitudinal  position  on  the  map,  and  its  distance 
from  the  sun,  it  is  the  climate  of  Northern  America  that 
would  be  deemed  the  ordinary  and  proper  climate,  and 
that  of  Northern  Europe  the  extraordinary  and  excep- 
tional one.  Britain  and  Ireland  owe  the  genial,  equable 
warmth  that  ripens  year  after  year  their  luxuriant  crops, 
and  renders  their  winters  so  mild  that  the  sea  never  freezes 
around  their  shores,  not,  at  least  directly^  to  the  distant 
sun.  Like  apartments  heated  by  pipes  of  steam  or  hot 
water,  or  greenhouses  heated  by  flues,  they  derive  their 
warmth  from  a  heating  agent  laterally  applied ;  they  are 
heated  by  warm  water.  The  great  Gulf  Stream,  which, 
issuing  from  the  Straits  of  Florida,  strikes  diagonally 
across  the  Atlantic,  and,  impinging  on  our  coasts,  casts 
upon  them  not  unfrequently  the  productions  of  the  West 
Indies,  and  always  a  considerable  portion  of  the  warmth 
of  the  West  Indies,  is  generally  recognized  as  the  heating 
agent  which  gives  to  our  country  a  climate  so  much  more 
mild  and  genial  than  that  of  any  other  country  whatever, 


•400  DESCTJPTIVE    SKETCHES    FROM 

similarly  situated.  Wherever  its  influence  is  felt,  —  and 
it  extends  as  far  north  as  the  southern. shores  of  Iceland, 
Nova  Zembla,  and  the  North  Cape,  —  the  sea  in  winter 
tells  of  its  meliorating  effects  by  never  freezing ;  it  remains 
open,  like  those  portions  of  a  reservoir  or  canal  into  which 
the  heated  water  of  a  steam-boiler  is  supposed  to  escape. 
In  some  seasons,  —  an  effect  of  unknown  causes,  —  the 
Gulf  Stream  impinges  more  strongly  against  our  coast 
than  at  others:  it  did  so  in  1775,  when  Benjamin  Franklin 
made  his  recorded  observations  upon  it,  —  the  first  of 
any  value  which  we  possess ;  and  again  during  the  three 
mild  winters  that  immediately  preceded  the  last  severe 
one,  —  that  of  1855,  —  and  which  owed  their  mildness 
apparently  to  that  very  circumstance.  It  was  found  dur- 
ing the  latter  seasons  that  the  temperature  of  the  sea 
around  our  western  coasts  rose  from  one  and  a  half  to  two 
degrees  above  its  ordinary  average ;  and  it  must  be  remem- 
bered how,  during  these  seasons,  every  partial  frost  that 
set  in  at  once  yielded  to  a  thaw  whenever  a  puff  of  wind 
from  the  west  carried  into  the  atmosphere  the  caloric  of 
the  water  over  which  it  swept.  The  amount  of  heat  dis- 
charged into  the  Atlantic  by  this  great  ocean-current  is 
enormous.  "A  simple  calculation,"  says  Lieutenant  Mau- 
ry,  "  will  show  that  the  quantity  of  heat  discharged  over 
the  Atlantic  from  the  waters  of  the  Gulf  Stream  in  a  win- 
ter day  would  be  sufficient  to  raise  the  whole  column  of 
atmosphere  that  rests  upon  France  and  the  British  Islands 
from  the  freezing  point  to  summer  heat."  "  It  is  the  influ- 
ence of  this  stream  updn  climate,"  he  adds,  "  that  makes 
Erin  the  Emerald  Isle  of  the  sea,  and  clothes  the  shores 
of  Albion  with  evergreen  robes ;  while,  in  the  same  lati- 
tude, on  the  other  side,  the  shores  of  Labrador  are  fast 
bound  in  fetters  of  ice." 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  401 

Now,  a  depression  beneath  the  sea  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can continent  would  have  the  effect  of  depriving  northern 
Europe  of  the  benefits  of  this  great  heating  current.  Its 
origin  has  been  traced  to  various  causes,  —  some  of  them 
very  inadequate  ones.  It  has  been  said,  for  instance,  that 
it  is  but  a  sort  of  oceanic  prolongation  of  the  Mississippi. 
It  has  been  demonstrated,  however,  that  it  discharges 
through  the  Straits  of  Florida  about  a  thousand  times 
more  water  than  the  Mississippi  does  at  its  mouth ;  and 
yet,  even  were  the  case  otherwise,  and  the  view  correct, 
any  great  depression  of  North  America  would  cut  off  the 
Mississippi  from  among  the  list  of  great  rivers,  by  convert- 
ing the  valley  which  it  occupies  into  a  sea,  and  would  thus 
terminate  the  existence  of  the  Gulf  Stream.  The  Stream 
has,  however,  a  very  different  and  more  adequate  origin, 
but  one  which  the  depression  of  the  North  American  Con- 
tinent would  equally  affect.  It  is  a  reaction  on  the  great 
Drift  Current.  If  the  reader  take  a  cup  or  basin  filled 
with  water,  and  blow  strongly  across  the  surface  of  the 
fluid,  two  distinct  currents  will  be  generated,  —  a  drift 
current,  which,  flowing  in  the  direction  of  his  breath,  will 
impinge  against  the  opposite  side  of  the  vessel,  —  and  a 
reactionary  current,  which,  passing  along  its  sides,  will 
return  towards  himself.  And  nothing  can  be  more  obvi- 
ous than  the  principle  on  which  this  occurs.  The  drift, 
current,  more  immediately  generated  by  his  breath,  heaps 
up  the  water  against  the  side  of  the  vessel  on  which  it 
impinges  ;  and  this  heaped-up  water  must  of  course  inevi- 
tably seek  to  return  to  the  other  side,  in  order  to  restore 
the  deranged  equilibrium  of  level.  Now,  the  Northern 
Atlantic,  —  the  Atlantic  to  the  north  of  the  equator, — 
displays  on  an  immense  scale  exactly  the  phenomena  ex- 
hibited by  this  simple  experiment  of  the  cup  or  basin. 

34* 


402  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES    FROM 

The  breath  of  the  trade-winds,  ever  blowing  upon  it.  from 
the  east  and  north-east,  in  that  broad  belt-  which  lies  be- 
tween the  tenth  and  the  twenty-sixth  degrees  of  north 
latitude,  forms  a  great  drift  current,  which,  impinging  on 
and  heaping  up  the  waters  against  the  South  American 
coast,  —  the  opposite  side  of  the  cup  or  basin,  —  flows 
northwards  into  the  Caribbean  Sea  and  Mexican  Gulf, 
and,  issuing  from  the  Straits  of  Florida  in  the  character 
of  the  reactionary  Gulf  Stream,  strikes  diagonally  across 
the  Atlantic  full  on  Northern  Europe.  But  the  existence 
of  this  reactionary  stream  is  not  merely  and  exclusively  a 
consequence  of  the  existence  of  the  Drift  Current :  it  is 
also  equally  a  consequence  of  the  existence  of  an  Ameri- 
can continent.  Save  for  the  side  of  the  basin  or  cup  oppo- 
site to  that  whence  the  breath  comes,  the  water,  instead 
of  returning  in  a  reactionary  current,  would  flow  over. 
Such  a  wide  breach  in  the  sides  of  the  cup  along  the  Isth- 
mus of  Panama,  for  instance,  as  a  depression  of  but  four 
hundred  and  sixty  feet  would  secure,  would  permit  the 
Drift  Current  to  flow  into  the  Pacific.  Such  a  wide  breach 
in  the  sides  of  the  cup  along  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi 
as  a  depression  equal  to  that  indicated  by  the  shells  of 
Moel  Tryfon  would  secure,  would  permit  the  reactionary 
Gulf  Stream,  though  already  formed,  to  escape,  along  what 
is  now  the  lake  district  of  America,  into  Hudson's  Bay. 
In  either  case  the  Gulf  Stream  would  be  lost  to  Northern 
Europe;  and  the  British  Islands,  robbed  of  the  Gulf 
Stream,  would  possess  merely  the  climate  proper  to  their 
latitudinal  position  on  the  map ;  —  they  would  possess  such 
a  climate  as  that  of  Labrador,  where,  beneath  seas  frozen 
over  every  winter  many  miles  from  the  shore,  exactly  the 
same  shells  now  live  as  may  be  found,  in  the  sub-fossil 
state,  in  the  Kyles  of  Bute,  or  underlying  the  pleasant 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  403 

town  of  Rothesay.  A  Submergence  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can Continent  would  give  to  Britain  and  Ireland,  with  the 
countries  of  Northern  Europe  generally,  what  they  all 
seem  to  have  possessed  during  the  protracted  ages  of  the 
Pleistocene  era,  —  a  glacial  climate. 

If  our  conclusions  be  just,  —  and  we  see  not  on  what 
grounds  they  are  to  be  avoided,  —  our  readers  will,  we 
dare  say,  agree  with  us  that  it  would  not  be  easy  to  pro- 
duce a  more'  striking  illustration  of  the  influences  which 
are  at  times  exerted  by  the  conditions  of  one  country  on 
those  of  another.  Our  brethren  of  the  United  States  are 
occasionally  not  a  little  jealous  of  the  mother  countiy ;  but 
we  suspect  all  of  them  do  not  know  how  completely  they 
could  ruin  her  could  they  but  succeed  in  keeping  their 
great  Gulf  Stream  to  themselves.  It  might  be  unwise, 
however,  to  urge  matters  quite  so  far,  lest  they  should 
provoke  us,  in  turn,  to  demand  back  again  the  large  brains 
and  high-mettled  blood  which  we  have  most  certainly 
given  them.  Such  of  our  readers  as  occasionally  enjoy  a 
summer  vacation  on  the  west  coast  might  find  it  no  dull 
or  useless  employment  to  begin  reading  for  themselves  the 
shell  inscriptions  borne  by  the  Pleistocene  deposits.  It 
would  at  once  form  an  excellent  exercise  in  Conchology 
and  a  first  lesson  in  Geology,  which,  from  the  interest  it 
excited,  would  scarce  fail  to  lead  on  to  others.  With  their 
eyes  educated  to  the  work,  too,  they  would  find,  we  doubt 
not,  the  beds  in  many  a  new  locality  in  which  they  had  not 
been  detected  before,  and  enjoy  the  same  sort  of  pleasure 
in  falling  upon  a  fresh  deposit,  as  that  enjoyed  by  an  Egyp- 
tian or  Assyrian  antiquary  when  he  discovers  a  catacomb 
of  unrolled  mummies  never  before  laid  open,  or  a  series  of 
sculptures  or  of  inscriptions  in  the  cuneiform  character, 
unseen  since  the  days  of  Semiramis  or  Sennacherib.  We 


404  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

ourselves  once  enjoyed  such  a  pleasure  at  Fairlie.  We 
laid  open  a  noble  bed,  previously  unknown,  about  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile  to  the  north  of  the  village ;  and  from  amid 
great  scalps  of  Pecten  Islandicus,  roughened  on  their 
upper  valves  by  huge  Balonida3,  and  from  beside  thick- 
lying  groups  of  Cypinidae,  we  disinterred  many  a  curious 
boreal  shell,  —  great  massive  Panopea,  graceful  Veneridca, 
the  Greenland  Mya,  and  the  Tellina  of  the  North  Cape ; 
and  beneath  all  we  detected  grooved  and  dressed  rock- 
surfaces,  that  bore  their  significant  markings  as  freshly  as 
if  the  grating  ice  had  passed  over  them  but  yesterday. 
We  would  specially  call  the  explorer's  attention  to  the  cor- 
roborative evidence  borne  by  appearances  of  mechanical 
origin  such  as  these  to  the  mute  testimony  of  the  shells. 
We  have  already  incidentally  referred  to  the  interesting 
deposits  of  Balnakaillie  Bay.  A  stream  falls  into  the  sea 
at  its  upper  extremity,  and  exhibits,  in  the  section  which 
it  supplies,  a  bed  charged  with  the  old  boreal  shells,  from 
where  it  creeps  out  along  the  beach,  till  where  we  lose  it 
in  the  interior,  far  above  the  reach  of  the  tide.  As  it 
passes  inwards,  we  find  the  old  coast  line  deposits  resting 
over  it ;  in  one  place  assuming  the  ordinary  character  of 
a  stratified  sand  and  gravel ;  in  another  existing  as  a  par- 
tially consolidated  conglomerate ;  while  immediately  be- 
neath it,  on  the  north  side  of  the  stream,  the  rock  appears 
strongly  marked  by  the  old  glacial  dressings.  The  me- 
chanical and  zoologic  evidences  of  the  existence  of  a 
period  of  extreme  cold  thus  lying  side  by  side  may  be 
studied  together.  But  the  district  has  its  many  such  ap- 
pearances. Not  a  few  of  the  hills  bear,  in  their  rounded 
protuberances  and  smoothed  and  channelled  hollows,  evi- 
dence of  the  ice-agent  that  wasted  them  of  old,  and  in 
the  valley  of  the  Gareloch,  only  a  few  miles  distant,  Mr. 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  405 

Charles  Maclaren  found  unequivocal  traces  of  an  ancient 
glacier. 

But  the  collateral  evidences  would  lead  us  into  a  field 
quite  as  wide  as  that  into  which  we  have  made  o\\r  brief 
excursion,  and  are  now  preparing  to  leave. '  The  following 
interesting  extract  from  Mr.  Kingsley's  Glaucus,  with 
which  we  conclude,  may  at  once  show  how  rightly  to  read 
these,  and  what  very  amusing  reading  they  form.  It  is 
thus  we  find  Mr.  Kingsley  accounting,  in  Jight  and  grace- 
ful dialogue,  for  the  formation  of  a  profoundly  deep  lochan 
of  limited  area,  that  opens  its  blue  eye  to  the  heavens 
amid  the  rough  wilderness  of  rocks  and  hills  that  encircle 
the  gigantic  Snowdon. 

"You  see  the  lake  is  nearly  circular.  On  the  side  where 
we  stand  the  pebbly  beach  is  not  six  feet  above  the  water, 
and  slopes  away  steeply  into  the  valley  behind  us,  while 
before  us  it  shelves  gradually  into  the  lake ;  forty  yards 
out,  as  you  know,  there  is  not  ten  feet  of  water,  and  then 
a  steep  bank,  the  edge  whereof  we  and  the  big  trout  know 
well,  sinks  suddently  to  unknown  depths.  On  the  oppo- 
site side,  that  vast  flat-topped  wall  of  rock  towers  up 
shoreless  into  the  sky  seven  hundred  feet  perpendicular. 
The  deepest  water  of  all,  we  know,  is  at  its  very  foot. 
Right  and  left  two  shoulders  of  down  slope  into- the  lake. 
Now  turn  round,  and  look  down  the  gorge.  Remark  that 
the  pebble  bank  on  which  we  stand  reaches  some  fifty 
yards  downward.  You  see  the  loose  stones  peeping  out 
everywhere.  We  may  fairly  suppose  that  we  stand  on  a 
dam  of  loose  stones,  a  hundred  feet  deep. 

"But  why  loose  stones?  and  if  so,  what  matter  and 
what  wonder  ?  There  are  rocks  cropping  out  everywhere, 
down  the  hill-side. 

"Because,  if  you  will  take  up  one  of  these  stones,  and 


40G  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

crack  it  across,  you  will  sec  that  it  is  not  of  the  same  stuff 
as  those  said  rocks.  Step  into  the  next  field  and  see. 
That  rock  is  the  common  Snowdon  slate  which  we  see 
everywhere.  The  two  shoulders  of  down  right  and  left 
are  slate,  too;  you  can  see  that  at  a  glance.  But  the 
stones  of  the  pebble  bank  are  a  close-grained,  yellow-spot- 
ted Syenite;  and  where, — where  on  earth  did  these  Syen- 
ite pebbles  come  from  ?  Let  us  walk  round  to  the  cliff  on 
the  opposite  side  and  see. 

"Now  mark.  Between  the  cliff-foot  and  the  sloping 
down  is  a  crack,  ending  in  a  gully :  the  nearer  side  is  of 
slate,  and  the  further  side  the  cliff  itself.  Why,  the  whole 
cliff  is  composed  of  the  very  same  stone  as  the  pebble 
ridge. 

"  Now,  my  good  friend,  how  did  these  pebbles  get  three 
hundred  yards  across  the  lake  ?  Hundreds  of  tons,  some 
of  them  three  feet  long,  —  who  carried  them  across  ?  The 
old  Cimbri  were  not  likely  to  amuse  themselves  by  making 
such  a  breakwater  up  here  in  No-man's-land,  two  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  sea ;  but  somebody  or  something  must 
have  carried  them,  for  stones  do  not  fly,  nor  swim  either. 

"  Let  our  hope  of  a  solution  be  in  John  Jones,  who  car- 
ried up  the  coracle.  Hail  him,  and  ask  what  is  on  the  top 
of  that  cliff.  So?  —  'Plains,  and  bogs,  and  another  linn.' 
Very  good.  Now,  does  it  not  strike  you  that  the  whole 
cliff  has  a  remarkably  smooth  and  plastered  look,  like  a 
hare's  run  up  an  earth  bank  ?  And  do  you  see  that  it  is 
polished  thus  only  over  the  lake  ?  that  as  soon  as  the 
cliff  abuts  on  the  downs  right  and  left,  it  forms  pinnacles, 
caves,  broken  angular  boulders  ?  Syenite  usually  does  so 
in  our  damp  climate,  from  the  weathering  effect  of  frost 
and  rain  ;  why  has  it  not  done  so  over  the  lake  ?  On  that 
part  something  (giants  perhaps)  has  been  scrambling  up 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  407 

and  down  on  a  very  large  scale,  and  so  rubbed  off  every 
corner  which  was  inclined  to  come  away,  till  the  solid  core 
of  the  rock  was  bared.  And  may  not  these  mysterious 
giants  have  had  a  hand  in  carrying  the  stones  across  the 
lake?  .  .  .  Really,  I  arn  not  altogether  jesting.  Think 
awhile  what  agent  could  possibly  have  produced  either 
one  or  both  of  these  effects? 

"  There  is  but  one ;  and  that,  if  you  have  been  an 
Alpine  traveller,  much  more  if  you  have  been  a  chamois- 
hunter,  you  have  seen  many  a  time  (whether  you  knew  it 
or  not)  at  the  very  same  work." 

"  Ice !  Yes  :  ice.  Hrymin,  the  frost-giant,  and  no  one 
else.  And  if  you  look  at  the  facts,  you  will  see  how  ice 
may  have  done  it.  Our  friend  John  Jones's  report  of 
plains  and  bogs,  and  a  lake  above,  makes  it  quite  possible 
that  in  the  ice-age  (glacial  epoch,  as  the  big-word  mongers 
call  it),  there  was  above  that  cliff  a  great  neve  or  snow- 
field,  such  as  you  have  seen  often  in  the  Alps  at  the  head 
of  each  glacier.  Over  the  face  of  this  cliff  a  glacier  had 
crawled  down  from  that  neve,  polishing  the  face  of  the 
rock  in  its  descent;  but  the  snow,  having  no  large  and 
deep  outlet,  has  not  slid  down  in  a  sufficient  stream  to 
reach  the  vale  below,  and  form  a  glacier  of  the  first  order, 
and  has  therefore  stopped  short  on  the  other  side  of  the 
lake,  as  a  glacier  of  the  second  order,  which  ends  in  an 
ice-cliff,  hanging  high  upon  the  mountain-side,  and  kept 
from  farther  progress  by  daily  melting.  If  you  have  ever 
gone  up  the  Mer-de-Glace  to  the  Tacal,  you  saw  a  mag- 
nificent specimen  of  the  sort  on  your  right  hand,  just 
opposite  the  Tacal,  in  the  Glacier  de  Trelaporte,  which 
comes  down  from  the  Aiguille  de  Charmoz." 

"This  explains  our  pebble  ridge.  The  stones  which 
the  glacier  rubbed  off  the  cliff  beneath  it,  it  carried  for- 


408  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

wards  slowly,  but  surely,  till  they  saw  the  light  again  in 
the  face  of  the  ice-cliff,  and  dropped  out  of  it  under  the 
melting  of  the  summer  sun,  to  form  a  huge  dam  across  the 
ravine ;  till,  the  '  ice-age '  past,  a  more  genial  climate  suc- 
ceeded, and  neve  and  glacier  melted  away;  but  the 
'  moraine '  of  stones  did  not,  and  remains  to  this  day,  the 
dam  which  keeps  up  the  waters  of  the  lake. 

"  There  is  my  explanation.  If  you  can  find  a  better, 
do ;  but  remember  always  that  it  must  include  an  answer 
to,  — '  How  did  the  stones  get  across  the  lake  ? ' " 


RECENT  GEOLOGICAL  DISCOVERIES/ 


PREPARATIONS    FOE   THE   BRITISH   ASSOCIATION  MEETING  AT 
ABERDEEN   IN  1859. 

THE  gentlemen  of  the  hammer  and  chisel  must  imme- 
diately prepare  a  Reform  Bill,  and  readjust  their  nomen- 
clature and  .classification.  Both  are  uncouth  and  barbar- 
ous, as  well  as  unscientific.  Recent  discoveries  have 
unsettled  almost  every  one  of  the  characters  and  tests  of 
the  age  of  rocks.  Old  Werner's  Transition  class,  though 
founded  to  some  extent  on  facts,  has  been  long  ago  dis- 
carded. But  will  hardness  or  crystalline  structure,  or  the 
absence  even  of  organic  remains,  hitherto  described  as  the 
grand  features  of  the  primitive  class  of  rocks,  now  bear 
to  be  trusted  as  essentialia  of  classification !  Every  sum- 
mer's ramble  multiplies  proofs  to  the  contrary.  The  mere 
vicinity  of  a  trap-vein,  squirted  from  its  boiling  caldron 
below,  among  the  most  sedimentary  strata,  has  often  baked 
them  into  hard  crystalline  masses,  and  converted  mud- 
banks  charged  with  shells  into  beautiful  granular  marble, 
as  may  be  seen  at  Strath,  in  Skye,  under  the  overlying 
igneous  rocks  of  the  Cuchullins.  And  perhaps  the  time  is 
not  far  distant  when  it  may  be  difficult  to  find  in  the  crust 
of  the  globe  any  assemblage  of  rocks  in  which  organisms 
may  not  be  detected,  although  heat,  for  the  most  part,  has 

*  See  Introductory  Kesum6,  p.  30. 
35 


410  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

nearly  obliterated  them.1  Again,  a  little  more  patient 
investigation,  we  expect,  will  blow  to  the  winds  many  a 
fine  theory  as  to  the  gradual  development  of  species,  and 
will  most  likely  show  that  at  no  former  period  was  there 
an  ocean  replete  with  shells  and  worms  low  in  the  scale  of 
organization,  which  had  not  on  its  shores  a  rich  vegetation 
and  a  fauna  abounding  in  reptiles,  and  perhaps  birds  and 
quadrupeds!  Thus,  when  Hugh  Miller  wrote  his  "Old 
Red  Sandstone,"  he  described  it  as  peculiarly  a  salt-water 
Jish  formation,  in  which  there  were  scarcely  any  shells  or 
vegetables,  the  faint  traces  of  the  latter  which  he  had  dis- 
covered being  only  markings  of  fucoids  and  similar  sea- 
weeds. So  far  as  then  known,  the  Scottish  Old  Red 
Sandstone  was  the  produce  of  a  deep  shoreless  ocean,  to 
which  no  decayed  forests  had  been  brought  down  by  rains 
and  rivers  to  become  future  coal-fields,  nor  on  whose 

1  "  The  hypothesis,"  says  Sir  Roderick  Hutchison,  in  his  newly-pub- 
lished edition  of  "  Siluria,"  "  that  all  the  earliest  sediments  have  been  so 
altered  as  to  have  obliterated  the  traces  of  any  relics  of  former  life  which 
may  have  been  entombed  in  them,  is  opposed  by  examples  of  enormously 
thick  and  often  finely  levigated  deposits  beneath  the  lowest  fossiliferous 
rocks,  and  in  which,  if  many  animal  remains  had  ever  existed,  more 
traces  of  them  would  be  detected." 

"  And  yet,"  as  he  again  observes,  "  the  fine  aggregation  and  unaltered 
condition  of  those  sediments  have  permitted  the  minutest  impressions  to 
be  preserved.  Thus,  not  only  are  the  broad  wave-marks  distinct,  but  also 
those  smaller  ripples  which  may  have  been  produced  by  wind,  together 
with  apparent  rain-prints,  as  seen  upon  the  muddy  surface,  and  even 
cracks  produced  by  the  action  of  the  sun  on  a  half-dried  surface.  Again, 
as  a  further  indication  that  these  are  littoral  markings,  and  not  the  results 
of  deep-sea  currents,  the  minute  holes  left  by  the  Annelides  are  most  con- 
spicuous on  the  sheltered  sides  of  the  reptiles  in  each  ^lab. 

"  Surely,  then,  if  animals  of  a  higher  organization  had  existed  in  this 
very  ancient  period,  we  should  find  their  relics  in  this  sediment,  so  admi- 
rably adapted  for  their  conservation,  as  seen  in  the  markings  of  the  little 
arcnicola,  accompanied  even  by  the  traces  of  diurnal  atmospheric  action." 
— "  Siluria,"  pp.  20—27.  L.  M. 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  411 

margins  and  Ingunes  disported  the  amphibious  crocodile 
or  other  allied  genera,  who  could  leave  the  impress  of 
their  feet  or  tails  on  the  soft  mud  or  sand.  The  formation, 
in  short,  was  considered  very  low  down  indeed,  and  neaf 
the  base  of  the  platform  of  rocks  in  which  rest  entombed 
the  remains  of  the  earliest  races  of  organized  creatures. 
But  what  have  the  discoveries  of  the  last  six  months 
established  ?  Why,  this,  that  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of 
the  east  coast  of  Scotland  is  comparatively  a  modern 
formation,  —  much  newer,  at  least,  than  the  grand  and 
lofty  masses  of  the  purple  and  red  conglomerate  of  the 
western  coast,  which  they  so  greatly  resemble,  but  upon 
which  Sir  Roderick  Murchison  has  now  proved  that  an 
extensive  series  of  crystalline  quartz-rocks,  limestones,  and 
micaceous  schists  repose  all  greatly  older  than  Hugh  Mil- 
ler's fish-beds !  The  discovery  a  few  years  ago  of  a  little, 
frog-like,  air-breathing  reptile  in  Morayshire  (named  the 
Telerpeton  Elginense),  has  been  a  bone  of  contention 
among  the  savans,  because,  according  to  past  theories,  it 
\vas  not  easy  to  admit  that  it  could  have  lived  at  the  date 
of  the  deposition  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone ;  and  hence 
very  grave  doubts  were  expressed  about  it,  and  much 
anxiety  shown  to  establish  that  it  belonged  to  the  car- 
boniferous strata,  or  to  a  New  Red  Sandstone  formation, 
which,  if  it  did  exist  in  our  district,  would  be  most  valua- 
ble, from  the  salt  and  calcareous  deposits  in  which  it 
usually  abounds.  But  within  the  last  month  or  so,  Sir 
Roderick  Murchison,  in  company  with  the  Rev.  G.  Gor- 
don, of  Birnie,  made  transverse  sections  of  the  whole 
series  of  Morayshire  freestones,  from  the  edges  of  the 
micaceous  schist  in  the  interior,  to  the  maritime  promon- 
tories of  Burghead  and  Lossiemouth,  which  convinced 
them  that  the  whole  red  and  yellowish  sandstones  of  the 


412  DESCRIPTIVE  SKETCHES   FROM 

province  "are  so  bound  together  by  mineral  characters 
and  fossil  remains,  that  they  must  all  be  grouped  as  Old 
Red  or  Devonian"  Nay,  more  than  this,  the  views  of  the 
Director-General  of  the  Geological  Survey  have  been  con- 
firmed and  extended  by  the  farther  discovery  of  foot-prints 
in  the  Burghead  sandstone,  not  only  of  a  small  reptile 
like  the  Telerpeton,  but  of  very  large  creatures,  that  in 
their  movements  made  enormous  strides,  and  whose  bushy 
tails  have  left  trails  more  distinct  than  the  largest  seals  or 
otters  could  do!  A  well-known  laborer  in  the  English 
deposits  (S.  H.  Beckles,  Esq.),  whose  discoveries,  in  the 
Purbeck  and  Wealden  beds,  of  the  jaw-bones  of  most 
gigantic  reptilia,  have  been  extensive  and  most  important, 
has  recently  examined  the  sandstone  quarries  at  Burg- 
head  and  Covesea,  where  he  has  discovered  the  most 
undoubted  foot-prints  of  both  large  and  small  animals ; 
and  he  has  sent  an  extensive  set  of  specimens  to  London, 
to  be  laid  before  the  Geological  Society  at  its  winter  meet- 
ings. Other  foot-marks  (each  having  the  impression  of 
three  or  four  claws  to  it)  have  lately  been  seen  by  Sir 
Roderick,  Mr.  Martin,  of  Elgin,  and  Mr.  Gordon,  and 
specimens  communicated  by  Mr.  P.  Duff;  so  that,  in  the 
language  of  Sir  Roderick  Murchison's  announcement  to 
the  late  meeting  of  the  British  Association  at  Leeds,  "  the 
presence  of  large  reptiles,  as  well  as  of  the  little  Telerpe- 
ton, in  this  upper  member  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  is 
completely  established." 

We  have  not  room  enough  at  present  to  point  out  fur- 
ther deductions  from  these  facts,  and  from  the  discovery, 
about  three  years  ago,  of  Silurian  fossils  in  the  Southern 
Highlands  and  in  Ayrshire.  We  allude  to  them  only  to 
show  that,  as  in  the  days  of  Hutton  and  Playfair,  the  gran- 
ite veins  which  traverse  in  all  directions  the  schists  of  Glen- 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  413 

Tilt  were  the  means  of  establishing  the  irruptive  and 
igneous  origin  of  granite,  so  Scotland  again  turns  out  to 
be  the  battle-field  of  our  men  of  science,  and  that  very 
great  many  things  may  be  expected  from  the  explorations 
which  undoubtedly  will  be  made,  in  connection  with  the 
next  meeting  of  the  association,  to  be  held  next  autumn 
at  Aberdeen,  under  the  eye  of  the  Prince  Consort,  and  at 
which  Sir  Roderick  Murchison,  we  are  glad  to  understand, 
is  to  take  his  place  as  vice-president  in  all  the  sections. 
He  is  the  senior  of  the  three  permanent  trustees  of  the 
Association,  and  one  of  the  founders  of  the  body  in  1831, 
of  whom,  strange  to  say,  only  five  are  now  alive.  In  Sir 
David  Brewster  the  science  of  the  south  of  Scotland  will 
be  admirably  represented  and  supported ;  while  Sir  Rod- 
erick, a  Ross-shire  man,  an  alumnus  of  the  Inverness  Acad- 
emy (aye,  and  one  who  put  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  the 
Highlanders  on  Corunna's  bloody  sod),  will  represent  the 
land  north  of  the  Spey. 

If  we  might  suggest  to  those  who  will  take  the  lead  in 
the  arrangements  for  the  Aberdeen  meeting,  we  would  say 
that  they  ought,  in  the  geological  section,  to  prepare  for 
one  excursion  to  Stonehaven,  on  the  eastern  coast,  and 
another  to  Cromarty  and  Eathie,  the  scenes  of  Hugh  Mil- 
ler's labors,  on  the  north. 

In  Stonehaven  bay,  and  arising  out  of  the  harbor,  may 
be  seen  large  dykes  of  trap  ascending  the  cliff  and  over- 
spreading the  sandstone  strata  like  the  branches  of  a  palm 
tree,  and  thence  overflowing  towards  the  very  curious 
quartzose  conglomerate  at  Dunnottar  Castle.  On  the  other 
or  northern  horn  of  the  bay,  irruptive  or  felspar  rocks  jut 
up  in  great  masses  and  promontories,  shifting  and  disturb- 
ing the  sandstone  strata;  and  immediately  beyond,  these 
latter  give  place  to  hard  crystalline  and  vertical  strata,  as 

85* 


414  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

to  which  the  Association  will  have  to  decide  whether  they 
are  altered  Silurian  or  true  primitive  rocks. 

At  Cromarty,  the  local  authorities,  we  think,  should 
prepare  for  a  visit  from  a  large  body  of  savans  (which  our 
railway  and  steamers  will  render  easy),  by  exploring  some 
new  sections  of  the  rocks  on  which  Hugh  Miller  used  to 
work.  Many  of  these,  it  is  well  known,  are  below  high- 
water  mark,  and  are  thus  often  covered  by  the  sea ;  while 
almost  all  the  nodules  containing  fossil-fish  have  been  ex- 
tracted and  carried  away.  Some  excavations  in  the  strike 
or  line  of  the  same  rocks  should  be  made  inland,  the  gravel 
and  boulder-clay  should  be  removed,  a  few  layers  of  the 
sandstone  underneath  loosened,  and  a  few  broad  sheets  of 
the  rock  exposed  in  situ,  and  so  left  for  the  further  exam- 
ination of  visitors,  without  the  natural  dip  or  contents  of 
the  beds  being  at  all  interfered  with. 

EXTRACT  PROM  "FOOTPRINTS  OF  THE  CREATOR,"  P.  199. 

In  my  little  work  on  the  "  Old  Red  Sandstone,"  I  have 
referred  to  an  apparent  lignite  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  of 
Cromarty,  which  presented,  when  viewed  by  the  micro- 
scope, marks  of  the  internal  fibre.  The  surface,  when 
under  the  glass,  resembled,  I  said,  a  bundle  of  horse-hairs 
lying  stretched  in  parallel  lines ;  and  in  this  specimen  alone, 
it  was  added,  had  I  found  aught  in  the  Lower  Old  Red 
Sandstone  approaching  to  proof  of  the  existence  of  dry 
land.  About  four  years  ago,  I  had  this  lignite  put  strin- 
gently to  the  question  by  Mr.  Sanderson ;  and  deeply  inter- 
esting was  the  result.  I  must  first  mention,  however,  that 
there  cannot  rest  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  regarding  the 
place  of  the  organism  in  the  geologic  scale.  It  is  unequiv- 
ocally a  fossil  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone.  I  found 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  415 

it  partially  imbedded,  with  many  other  nodules  half-disin- 
terred by  the  sea,  in  an  ichthyolitic  deposit,  a  few  hundred 
yards  to  the  east  of  the  town  of  Cromarty,  which  occurs 
more  than  four  hundred  feet  over  the  Great  Conglomerate 
base  of  the  system.  A  nodule  that  lay  immediately  beside 
it  contained  a  well-preserved  specimen  of  the  Coccosteus 
decipiens  ;  and  in  the  nodule  in  which  the  lignite  itself  is 
contained  the  practised  eye  may  detect  a  scattered  group 
of  scales  of  Diplacanthus,  a  scarce  less  characteristic 
organism  of  the  lower  formation.  And  what,  asks  the 
reader,  is  the  character  of  this  ancient  vegetable,  —  the 
most  ancient,  by  three  whole  formations,  that  has  presented 
its  internal  structure  to  the  microscope  ?  Is  it  as  low  in 
the  scale  of  development  as  in  the  geological  scale  ?  Does 
this  venerable  Adam  of  the  forest  appear,  like  the  Adam 
of  the  infidel,  as  a  squalid,  ill-formed  savage,  with  a  rugged 
shaggy  nature  which  it  would  require  the  suggestive  neces- 
sities of  many  ages  painfully  to  lick  into  civilization  ?  Or 
does  it  appear  rather  like  the  Adam  of  the  poet  and  the 
theologian,  independent,  in  its  instantaneously-derived  per- 
fection, of  all  after  developments, — 

"  Adam,  the  goodliest  man  of  men  since  born 
His  sons  ?  " 

Is  this  tissue  vascular  or  cellular,  or,  like  that  of  some  of 
the  cryptogamia,  intermediate  ?  Or  what,  in  fine,  is  the 
nature  and  bearing  of  its  mute  but  emphatic  testimony 
on  that  doctrine  of  progressive  development1  of  late  so 
strangely  resuscitated  ? 

In  the  first  place,  then,  this  ancient  fossil  is  a  true  wood, 

1  This  alludes,  of  course,  to  the  development  theory  of  the  "  Vestiges  of 
the  Natural  History  of  Creation." 


416  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES    FROM 

—  a  dicotyledonous  or  polycotyledonous  Gymnosperm* 
that,  like  the  pines  and  larches  of  our  existing  forests,  bore 
naked  seeds,  which,  in  their  state  of  germination,  developed 
either  double  lobes  to  shelter  the  embryo  within,  or  shot 
out  a  fringe  of  verticillate  spikes,  which  performed  the 
same  protective  functions,  and  that,  as  it  increased  in  bulk 
year  after  year,  received  its  accessions  of  growth  in  outside 
layers.  In  the  transverse  section  the  cells  bear  the  reticu- 
lated appearance  which  distinguish  the  coniferae ;  the  lig- 
nite had  been  exposed  in  its  bed  to  a  considerable  degree 
of  pressure ;  and  so  the  openings  somewhat  resemble  the 
meshes  of  a  net  that  has  been  drawn  a  little  awry ;  but  no 
general  obliteration  of  their  original  character  has  taken 
place,  save  in  minute  patches,  where  they  have  been  injured 
by  compression  or  the  bituminizing  process.  All  the  tubes 
indicated  by  the  openings  are,  as  in  recent  coniferse,  of 
nearly  the  same  size ;  and  though,  as  in  many  of  the  more 
ancient  lignites,  there  are  no  indications  of  annual  rings, 
the.  direction  of  the  medullary  rays  is  distinctly  traceable. 
The  longitudinal  sections  are  rather  less  distinct  than  the 
transverse  one :  in  the  section  parallel  to  the  radius  of  the 
stem  or  bole  the  circular  disks  of  the  coniferae  were  at  first 
not  at  all  detected ;  and,  as  since  shown  by  a  very  fine 
microscope,  they  appear  simply  as  double  and  triple  lines 
of  undefined  dots,  that  somewhat  resemble  the  stippled 
markings  of  the  miniature  painter ;  nor  are  the  openings 
of  the  medullary  rays  frequent  in  the  tangental  section  (i.  e. 
that  parallel  to  the  bark) ;  but  nothing  can  be  better  de- 
fined than  the  peculiar  arrangement  of  the  woody  fibre, 
and  the  longitudinal  form  of  the  cells.  Such  is  the  char- 
acter of  this  the  most  ancient  of  lignites  yet  found  that 
yields  to  the  microscope  the  peculiarities  of  its  original 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  417 

structure.    We  find  in  it  an  unfallen  Adam  — not  a  half- 
developed  savage.1 

The  olive-leaf  which  the  dove  brought  to  Noah  estab- 
lished at  least  three  important  facts,  and  indicated  a  few 
more.  It  showed  most  conclusively  that  there  was  dry 
land,  that  there  were  olive-trees,  and  that  the  climate  of 
the  surrounding  region,  whatever  change  it  may  have  un- 
dergone, was  still  favorable  to  the  development  of  vegeta- 
ble life.  And,  further,  it  might  be  safely  inferred  from  it, 
that  if  olive-trees  had  survived,  other  trees  and  plants  must 
have  survived  also ;  and  that  the  dark  muddy  prominences 
round  which  the  ebbing  currents  were  fa^  sweeping  to 
lower  levels  would  soon  present,  as  in  antediluvian  times, 
their  coverings  of  cheerful  green.  The  olive-leaf  spoke 

1  On  a  point  of  such  importance  I  find  it  necessary  to  strengthen  my 
testimony  by  auxiliary  evidence.  The  following  is  the  judgment,  on  this 
ancient  petrifaction,  of  Mr.  Nicol,  of  Edinburgh,  —  confessedly  one  of  our 
highest  living  authorities  in  that  division  of  fossil  botany  which  takes 
cognizance  of  the  internal  structure  of  lignites,  and  decides,  from  their 
anatomy,  their  race  and  family : 

"  Edinburgh,  19th  July  1845. 

*'  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  examined  the  structure  of  the  fossil-wood  which  you 
found  in  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  at  Cromarty ,  and  have  no  hesitation  in  stating, 
that  the  reticulated  texture  of  the  transverse  sections,  though  somewhat  com- 
pressed, clearly  indicates  a  coniferous  origin;  but  as  there  is  not  the  slightest 
trace  of  a  disc  to  be  seen  in  the  longitudinal  sections  parallel  to  the  medullary 
rays,  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  it  belongs  to  the  pine  or  araucarian  division. 
I  am,  etc.  WILLIAM  NICOL." 

It  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Nicol  failed  to  detect  what  I  now  deem  the  discs 
of  this  conifer,  —  those  stippled  markings  to  which  I  have  referred.  But 
even  were  this  portion  of  the  evidence  wholly  wanting,  we  would  be  left 
in  doubt,  in  consequence,  not  whether  the  Old  Red  lignite  formed  part  of 
a  true  gymnospermous  tree,  but  whether  that  tree  is  now  represented  by 
the  pines  of  Europe  and  America,  or  by  the  araucarians  of  Chili  and  New 
Zealand.  Were  I  to  risk  an  opinion  in  a  department  not  particularly  my 
province,  it  would  be  in  favor  of  an  araucarian  relationship. 


V 
418  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM 

not  of  merely  a  partial,  but  of  a  general  vegetation.  Now, 
the  coniferous  lignite  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone  we 
find  charged,  like  the  olive-leaf,  with  a  various  and  sing- 
ularly interesting  evidence.  It  is  something  to  know,  that 
in  the  times  of  the  Coccosteus  and  Asterokpis  there  existed 
dry  land,  and  that  that  land  wore,  as  at  after  periods,  its 
soft,  gay  mantle  of  green.  It  is  something  also  to  know, 
that  the  verdant  tint  Avas  not  owing  to  a  profuse  develop- 
ment of  mere  immaturities  of  the  vegetable  kingdom,  — 
crisp,  slow-growing  lichens,  or  watery  spore-propagated 
fungi,  that  shoot  up  to  their  full  size  in  a  night,  —  nor  even 
to  an  abundance  of  the  more  highly  organized  families  of 
the  liverworts  and  the  mosses.  These  may  have  abounded 
then,  as  now ;  though  we  have  not  a  shadow  of  evidence 
that  they  did.  But  while  we  have  no  proof  whatever  of 
their  existence,  we  have  conclusive  proof  that  there  existed 
orders  and  families  of  a  rank  far  above  them.  On  the  dry 
land  of  the  Lower  Old  Red  Sandstone,  on  which,  according 
to  the  theory  of  Adolphe  Brogniart,  nothing  higher  than  a 
lichen  or  a  moss  could  have  been  expected,  the  ship-car- 
penter might  have  hopefully  taken  axe  in  hand  to  explore 
the  woods  for  some  such  stately  pine  as  the  one  described 
by  Milton,  — 

"  Hewn  on  Norwegian  hills,  to  be  the  mast 
Of  some  great  admiral." 


SIR  RODERICK  MURCHISON 


AT  a  meeting  of  the  Geological  Society  of  London,  held 
on  the  15th  December  1858,  Part  III.  of  a  paper  by  Sir 
Roderick  Murchison,  on  "  the  Geological  Structure  of  the 
North  of  Scotland,"  was  read. 

Referring  to  his  previous  memoir  for  an  account  of  the 
triple  division  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  of  Caithness  and 
the  Orkney  Islands,  Sir  Roderick  showed  how  {he  chief 
member  of  the  group  in  those  tracts  diminished  in  its 
range  southwards  into  Ross-shire,  and  how,  when  traceable 
through  Inverness  and  Nairn,  it  was  scarcely  to  be  recog- 
nized in  Morayshire,  but  reappeared,  with  its  characteristic 
ichthyolites,  in  Banffshire  (Dipple,  Tynet,  and  Gamrie). 
He  then  prefaced  his  description  of  the  ascending  order  of 
the  strata  belonging  to  this  group  in  Morayshire  by  a 
sketch  of  the  successive  labors  of  geologists  in  that  dis- 
trict; pointing  out  how,  in  1828,  the  sandstones  and  corn- 
stones  of  this  tract  had  been  shown  by  Professor  Sedgwick 
and  himself  to  constitute,  together  with  the  inferior  Red 


420  DESCRIPTIVE    SKETCHES   FROM  • 

Sandstone  and  conglomerate,  one  natural  geological  assem- 
blage; that  in  1839  the  late  Dr.  Malcolmson  made  the  im- 
portant additional  discovery  of  fossil  fishes,  in  conjunction 
with  Lady  Gordon  Gumming;  and  also  read  a  valuable 
memoir  on  the  structure  of  the  tract,  before  the  Geolog- 
ical Society,  of  which,  to  his,  the  author's,  regret,  an  ab- 
stract only  had  been  published.  —  (Proc.  Geol.  Soc.  vol.  iii. 
p.  141.)  Sir  Roderick  revisited  the  district  in  the  autumn 
of  1840,  and  made  sections  in  the  environs  of  Forres  and 
Elgin.  Subsequently,  Mr.  P.  Duff  of  Elgin  published  a 
"  Sketch  of  the  Geology  of  Moray,"  with  illustrative  plates 
of  fossil-fishes,  sections,  and  a  geological  map,  by  Mr.  John 
Martin;  and  afterwards  Mr.  Alexander  Robertson  threjv 
much  light  upon  the  structure  of  the  district,  particularly 
as  regarded  deposits  younger  than  those  under  considera- 
tion. All  these  writers,  as  well  as  Sedgwick  and  himself, 
had  grouped  the  yellow  and  whitish-yellow  sandstones  of 
Elgin  with  the  Old  Red  Sandstone ;  but  the  discovery  in 
them  of  the  curious  small  reptile  the  Telerpeton  Elgin- 
ense,  described  by  Mantell  in  1851  from  a  specimen  in  Mr. 
P.  Duff's  collection,  first  occasioned  doubts  to  arise  respect- 
ing the  age  of  the  deposit.  Still,  the  sections  by  Captain 
Brickenden,  who  sent  that  reptile  up  to  London,  proved 
that  it  had  been  found  in  a  sandstone  which  dipped  under 
"Cornstone,"  and  which  passed  downwards  into  the  Old 
Red  series.  Captain  Brickenden  also  sent  to  London  nat- 
ural impressions  of  the  foot-prints  of  an  apparently  rep- 
tilian animal  in  a  slab  of  similar  sandstone,  from  the  coast- 
ridge  extending  from  Burghead*  to  Lossiemouth  (Cum- 
mingston).  Although  adhering  to  his  original  view  re- 
specting the  age  of  the  sandstones,  Sir  R.  Murchison  could 
not  help  having  misgivings  and  doubts,  in  common  with 
many  geologists,  on  account  of  the  high  grade  of  reptile 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  421 

to  which  the  Telerpeton  belonged ;  and  hence  he  revisited 
the  tract,  examining  the  critical  points,  in  company  with 
his  friend  the  Rev.  G.  Gordon,  to  whose  zealous  labors  he 
owned  himself  to  be  greatly  indebted.  In  looking  through 
the  collections  in  the  public  Museum  of  Elgin,  and  of  Mr. 
P.  Dufl^  he  was  much  struck  with  the  appearance  of  sev- 
eral undescribed  fossils,  apparently  belonging  to  reptiles, 
which,  by  the  liberality  of  their  possessors,  were,  at  his 
request,  sent  up  for  inspection  to  the  Museum  of  Practical 
Geology.  He  was  also  much  astonished  at  the  state  of 
preservation  of  a  large  bone  (ischium)  apparently  belong- 
ing to  a  reptile,  found  by  Mr.  Martin  in  the  same  sand- 
stone quarries  of  Lossiemouth  in  which  the  scales  or  scutes 
of  the  Stagonolepis,  described  as  belonging  to  a  fish  by 
Agassiz,  had  been  found.  On  visiting  these  quarries,  Mr. 
G.  Gordon  and  himself  fortunately  discovered  other  bones 
of  the  same  animal;  and  these,  having  been  compared 
with  the  remains  in  the  Elgin  collections,  have  enabled 
Professor  Huxley  to  decide  that,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Telerpeton,  all  these  casts,  scales,  and  bones  belong  to  the 
reptile  Stagonolepis  Robertsoni.  Sir  Roderick,  having 
visited  the  quarries  in  the  coast-ridge,  from  which  slabs 
with  impressions  of  reptilian  foot-marks  had  long  been 
obtained,  induced  Mr.  G.  Gordon  to  transmit  a  variety  of 
these,  which  are  now  in  the  Museum  of  Practical  Geology, 
and  of  which  some  were  exhibited  at  the  meeting. 

After  reviewing  the  whole  succession  of  strata,  from  the 
edge  of  the  crystalline  rocks  in  the  interior  to  the  bold 
clifls  on  the  sea-coast,  the  author  has  satisfied  himself  that 
the  reptile-bearing  sandstones  must  be  considered  to  form 
the  uppermost  portion  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone,  or  Dev- 
onian group,  the  following  being  among  the  chief  reasons 
for  his  adherence  to  this  view :  —  1.  That, these  sandstones 

36 


422  DESCRIPTIVE   SKETCHES   FROM 

have  everywhere  the  same  strike  and  dip  as  the  inferior 
red  sandstones  containing  Holoptychii  and  other  Old  Red 
ichthyolites,  there  being  a  perfect  conformity  between  the 
two  rocks,  and  a  gradual  passage  from  the  one  into  the 
other.  2.  That  the  yellow  and  light  colors  of  the  upper 
band  are  seen  in  natural  sections  to  occur  and  alternate 
with  red  and  green  sandstones,  marls,  and  conglomerates 
low  down  in  the  ichthyolitic  series.  3.  That  while  the 
concretionary  limestones  called  "  Cornstones "  are  seen 
amidst  some  of  the  lowest  red  and  green  conglomerates, 
they  reappear  in  a  younger  and  broader  zone  at  Elgin, 
and  reoccur  above  the  Telerpeton-stone  at  Spynie  Hill, 
and  above  the  Stagonolepis-sandstone  of  Lossiemouth; 
thus  binding  the  whole  into  one  natural  physical  group. 
4.  That  whilst  the  small  patches  of  so-called  "Wealden" 
or  Oolitic  strata,  described  by  Mr.  Robertson  and  others, 
occuring  in  this  district,  are  wholly  unconformable  to,  and 
rest  upon,  the  eroded  surfaces  of  all  the  rocks  under  con- 
sideration, so  it  was  shown  that  none  of  the  Oolitic  or 
Liassic  rocks  of  the  opposite  side  of  the  Moray  Frith,  or 
those  of  Brora,  Dunrobin,  Eathie,  etc.,  which  are  charged 
with  Oolitic  and  Liassic  remains,  resemble  the  reptiliferous 
sandstones  and  "  Cornstones"  of  Elgin,  or  their  repetitions 
in  the  coast-ridge  that  extends  from  Burghead  to  Lossie- 
mouth. Fully  aware  of  the  great  difficulty  of  determin- 
ing the  exact  boundary -line  between  the  Uppermost  Devo- 
nian and  Lowest  Carboniferous  strata,  and  knowing  that 
they  pass  into  each  other  in  many  countries,  the  author 
stated  that  no  one  could  dogmatically  assert  that  the  rep- 
tile-bearing sandstones  might  not,  by  future  researches,  be 
proved  to  form  the  commencement  of  the  younger  era. 

Sir  Roderick  concluded  by  stating  that  the  conversion 
of  the  Stagonolepis  into  a  reptile  of  high  organization, 


A  GEOLOGIST'S  PORTFOLIO.  423 

though   of  nondescript  characters,  DID  NOT  INTERFERE 

WITH  HIS  LONG-CHERISHED  OPINION FOUNDED  ON  AC- 
KNOWLEDGED FACTS AS  TO  THE  PROGRESSIVE  SUCCES- 
SION OF  GREAT  CLASSES  OF  ANIMALS,  and  that,  inasmuch 
as  the  earliest  trilobite  of  the  invertebrate  Lower  Silurian 
era  was  as  wonderfully  organized  as  any  living  Crusta- 
cean^ so  it  did  not  unsettle  his  belief  to  find  that  the  earli- 
est reptiles  yet  recognized,  —  the  Stagonolepis  and  Telerpe- 
ton,  — pertained  to  a  high  order  of  that  class. 

At  the  same  meeting,  papers  were  read  "  On  the  Stago- 
nolepis  Mobertsoni  of  the  Elgin  Sandstones,  and  on  the 
Footmarks  in  the  Sandstones  of  Cummingston,"  by  Mr.  T. 
H.  Huxley ;  as  well  as  one  "  On  Fossil  Foot-prints  in  the 
Old  Red  Sandstones  at  Cummingston,"  by  S.  H.  Beckles, 
Esq. 


THE    END. 


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Chambers'  Home  Book.  A  choice  se- 

lection of  Interesting  and  Instructive  Read- 
ing, for  the  Old  and  Young.  6  vols.  IGmo. 
Cloth,  $3. 

Cyclopedia  of  Anecdotes.  A  choice 

Selection  of  Anecdotes  of  the  various  forms 
of  Literature  and  the  Arts,  and  of  the  most 
celebrated  Literary  Characters  and  Artists 
By  KAZLITT  ABVINE,  A.  M.  With  Illustra- 
tions. 725  pages,  octavo.  Cloth,  $3. 

The  choicest  collection  of  anecdotes  ever 
published.  It  contains  3040  anecdotes,  350  fine 
illustrations,  and  such  is  the  wonderful  vari- 
ctv,  that  it  will  be  found  an  almost  inexhaust- 
ible fund  of  interest  for  every  class  of  readers. 

Works  by  Hugh  Miller: 

Testimony  of  the  Rocks. 

Footprints  of  the  Creator. 

Old  Red  Sandstone. 

My  First  Impressions   of  England 

and  its  People. 
My  Schools  and  Schoolmates. 


or  ENGLISH  WORDS  AND 
PHRASES.  So  classified  as  to  facilitate  the 
expression  of  ideas,  and  to  assist  in  literary 
composition.  By  PETER  MARK  ROGET. 
Revised  and  Edited,  with  a  List  of  Foreign 
Words  defined  in  English,  by  BARJTAS 
SEARS,  D.  D.,  Pres.  of  Brown  Univ.  12mo. 
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Facilitates  a  writer  in  seizing  upon  just  tho 
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Visits  to  European  Celebrities.  By 

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Ulustrations,  etc.    12mo.    Cloth,  gilt,  $1.50. 

The  Natural  History  or  THK  HUMAX 

SPECIES  :  Its  Typical  Forms  and  Primeval 
Distribution.  By'CiiAS.  HAMILTON  SMITH. 
With  an  Introduction  containing  an  abstract 
of  the  views  of  writers  of  repute.  By  SAM- 
UEL KNEEI.AXD,  Jr.,  M.  D.  With  illustra- 
tions. 12mo.  Cloth,  $1.25. 

The  Camel '    His  Organization,  Habits  and 
Uses,  considered  with  reference  to  his  intro- 
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nople.   12mo.     Cloth,  63  cts. 
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est, especially  at  the  present  time.  It  furnishei 
the  only  complete  and  reliable  account  of  ttj* 
Camel  in  the  language. 

(9) 


V.A.  L 


TL,  E 


Diary  and  Correspondence  or  TUB 

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»on,  WM.  It-  LAWKKNCK.  M.  J).  Octavo, 
cloth,  $1.25  ;  also,  royal  I2mo.  ed.,  cl.,  fl.OO. 

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Analytical  Concordance  of  the  Holy 

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Lectures  on  the  Lord's  Prayer  —  Re- 
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The  Halllg  t  or  the  Shccpfold  in  the 
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Guiding  Star.  —  The  Poor  Loy  and  Mer- 
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THE  AIMWELL  STORIES.  Resembling 
nnd  quite  equal  to  the  "Hollo  Stories."  — 
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WORKS  BT  Rev.  HARVEY  NEWCOMB. 
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God  Revealed   in  Nature  and  IP 

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of  Hymns  in  the  English  language. 


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This  edition  contains  over  one  hundred  pages  of  entirely  new  matter,  from  the  pen  of  Hugh 
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"  It  is  withal  one  of  the  most  beautiful  specimens  of  English  composition  to  be  found,  convey- 
ina  information  on  a  most  difficult  and  profound  science,  in  a  style  at  once  novel,  pleasing,  and 
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THE  FOOT-PRINTS  OF  THE  CKEATOB;  or,  the  Asterolepis  of  Strom- 
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12mo,  cloth,  $1.00. 

DB.  BCCKLAND  said  he  would  give  his  left  hand  tu  possess  such  power  of  description  as  this  man. 

TESTIMONY  OF  THE  BOCKS;  or,  Geology  in  its  Bearings  on  the  two 
Theologies,  Natural  and  Revealed.  "  Tlwu  shall  be  in  league  with  the  stones  of  the 
field." — Jab.  With  numerous  elegant  Illustrations.  One  volume,  royal  12mo,  cloth, 
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:ing  need  be  raid  of  it  save  that  it  possesses  the  same  fascination  for  the  reader  that  charac- 
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MY  SCHOOLS  AND  SCHOOLMASTEBS  ;  or,  the  Story  of  my  Bduca. 
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MY  FIBST  IMPRESSION'S  OF  ENGLAND  AND  ITS  PEOPLE. 

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CYCLOPAEDIA  OP  ANECDOTES  OP  LITERATURE  AND 
THE  FINE  ARTS.  Containing  a  copious  and  choice  Selection  of  Anecdotes 
of  the  various  fnrms  of  Literature,  of  the  Arts,  of  Architecture,  Engravings,  Music, 
Poetry,  Painting,  and  Sculpture,  and  of  the  most  celebrated  Literary  Characters  and 
Artists  of  different  Countries  and  Ages,  &c.  By  KAZI.ITT  ARVINE,  A.  M.,  author  of 
"Cyclopicdia  of  Moral  ami  Religious  Anecdotes."  .With  numerous  Illustrations.  725  pp. 
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to  itrtiit.i,  inni-hiinicf,  and  others,  as  a  DICTIONARY  for  reference,  in  relation  to  facts  on  the  num- 
berless subject!  and  characters  introduced.  There  arc  also  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  jine 
Illustrations. 

THE  LIFE  OF  JOHN"  MILTON,  Narrated  in  Connection  with  the  POLITICAL, 
ECCLKSIASTICAL,  and  LITERARY  HisToitv  OK  HIS  TiMK.  J!y  DAVID  Missos,  M.A.,  Professor 
of  English  Literature,  University  College,  London.  Vol.  I.,  embracing  the  period  from 
1608  to  1639.  With  Portraits,  and  specimens  of  his  handwriting  at  different  periods. 
Koyal  octavo,  cloth,  $0.00. 

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THE  GREYSON  LETTERS.  Selections  from  the  Correspondence  of  R.  E.  II. 
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the  most  attractive  manner.  It  abounds  in  the  keenest  wit  and  humor,  satire  and  logic.  It  fairly 
entitle**  Mr.  Rogers  to  rank  with  Sydney  Smith  and  Charles  Lamb  as  a  wit  and  humorist,  and  with 
Hir.liop  Kutler  as  a  rcasoncr.  Mr.  Rogers'  name  will  share  with  those  of  Butler  and  Fascal,  in  the 
gratitude  and  veneration  of  posterity."  —  London  Quarterly. 

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ESSAYS  IN  BIOGRAPHY  AND  CRITICISM.        By  PETER  BATSB,  M. 

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FIKST  SERIES  :  — Thomas  De  Quincy.  —  Tennyson  and  his  Tenchcrs.  —  Mrs.  Barrett  Brown- 
ing—Recent Aspects  of  British  Art. —John  Ruskin.  —  Hugh  Miller. —  The  Modern  Novels 
Ih'-krns,  tc.  —  Ellis,  Acton,  and  Currer  Bell. 

SECOND  SERIES  .-—Charles  Kingsley.  —  S.  T.  Coleridge.  —  T.  B.  Macaulay.  —  Alison.-- We  1- 
liiizton.  —  Napoleon.  —  Plato.  —  Characteristics  of  Christian  Civilization.  —  The  Modern  University. 
-  The  Pulpit  and  the  Press.  —  Testimony  of  the  Rocks  :  a  Defence. 

VISITS  TO  EUROPEAN  CELEBRITIES.  By  the  llev.  WILLIAM  B. 
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advantageous  circumstances.  Besides  these  "  pen  and  ink  "  sketches,  the  work  contains  the  novel 
attraction  »f  a/oc-simtte  of  the  siana'ure  of  each  of  the  persons  introduced.  (28) 


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